Press Release No. IFAD/17/01

Rome, 25 May - A USD 7.7 million programme in Grenada, the ''Rural Enterprise Project'' will receive a USD 4.2 million loan from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). A loan agreement was signed today at the Fund’ s Headquarters by Mrs. Joan-Marie Coutain, Chargée d’Affaires in the Embassy of Grenada in Brussels and Mr. Lennart Båge, President of the Fund.

Grenada is a vulnerable small island state. Much of the population live in poverty and are cut off from the mainstream economy which cannot absorb too many external shocks. The project will be able to replicate successful aspects of similar projects in Dominica and Saint Lucia, build upon community mobilization work. The projects’ participatory methodology and its approach to promoting business are innovative features that characterize IFAD support to development activities in the Windward Islands of the country

Areas of extreme poverty and a wide disparity of living standards span across the country. Women and children are the most seriously affected by poverty and unemployment rates are the highest in the Caribbean, especially in the young. Among other factors, the causes of poverty include the country’s small size and its exposure to natural disaster. Tropical storms and hurricanes regularly cause serious damage to infrastructure and contribute to keeping the poor in a poverty trap. At the rural household level, poverty is determined by a lack of access to productive resources including credit, access to markets and/or information, access to technical and financial support services.

The Rural Enterprise Project’s main goal is to reduce rural poverty in a sustainable and gender-equitable manner, offering rural households a chance to enhance their income by helping them to recognize and realize economic opportunities. One of the strategies is to adopt and adapt appropriate strategies already applied by target households. The project will be demand-driven and its clients will have access to funds for socio-productive investments at community level; it will also aim to strengthen the community’s capacity to identify problems and formulate workable solutions; it will encourage a commercially oriented approach; it will aim for cost recovery and seek to improve linkages between clients and rural service providers. The project will make specific efforts to involve young people in the development process.

With this programme, IFAD will have financed two projects in Grenada, for a total loan amount of about USD 6.7 million.

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IFAD is a specialised agency of the United Nations with the specific mandate of combating hunger and poverty in the most disadvantaged regions of the world. Since 1978 IFAD has financed 578 projects in 114 countries, allocating almost US$ 7 billion in the form of loans and grants. Through these projects, about 250 million rural people have had a chance to move out of poverty. IFAD makes the greater part of its resources available to low-income countries on very favourable terms, with up to 40 years for repayment and including a grace period of up to ten years and a service charge of 0.75% per year.