Enugu state government has released the sum of N274, 000,000 .00 as its counterpart fund payment to the state’s International Fund for Agricultural Development/Value Chain Development Programme (IFAD/VCDP) to enable the project continue effectively in the state.
IFAD is an international financial institution and a specialised agency of United Nations working to address poverty and hunger and improve the ease of farming and bring sustainability in rural areas of developing countries.
The Enugu state programme coordinator of IFAD-VCDP, Dr. Edward Isiwu, who stated this while addressing journalists in his office in Enugu, said VCDP is a six-year development initiative of the Federal Government of Nigeria FGN/IFAD programme that focuses on supporting cassava and rice value chains for small farmers.
Isiwu said the amount released by Mbah was an implementation support to the agricultural sector and in particular the VCDP small holder farmers to enable the state access more funds towards boosting food security and employment.
He said the governor had graciously paid the arrears of counterpart fund, having seen the impact of the Programme in the past two and half years in the state.
The coordinator maintained that the governor’s act is a determination to strengthen partnership with FGN/IFAD VCDP to support rural household farmers annually with agro-inputs, agro-processing equipment, market infrastructure, water supply across the benefitting LGAs for increase in crop yield and improved standard of living of farmers.
While thanking Governor Mbah for sustaining the programme in the state, Isiwu, said the payment would strengthen the capacity of the State Programme Management Unit (SPMU) to profile more farmers into the scheme, construct more market infrastructure, build more rice and cassava processing centres, solar powered boreholes, agro-equipment, agro-inputs, develop capacity of women farmers on dietary and nutrition activities and many others.
“We have already profiled over 10,000 farmers in our data bank benefitting from the IFAD-VCDP project and so this counterpart contribution will make us reach to more smallholder farmers, provide infrastructure to more communities and agro equipment support to farmers within the five LGAs,” he said.