Press release No.: IFAD/45/08

Rome, 22 September 2008: IFAD Member States have started the process of appointing through election a new president to succeed the current President, Lennart Båge of Sweden.

The new president, the fifth since IFAD’s establishment in 1977, will be appointed in February 2009, during IFAD’s annual Governing Council in Rome, following an election by IFAD’s Member States. Nominations of candidates for the presidency of IFAD are put forward by Member States of the Fund.  The closing date for nominations is 20 December 2008.

IFAD’s new president will lead a results-driven and values-based institution that has seen its lending and grants programme grow by an average of 10 per cent per year over the past six years. The Fund supports over 240 ongoing programmes and projects whose investment costs total US$8.4 billion, with IFAD providing approximately US$4 billion.  IFAD is now one of the largest sources of development financing for agriculture and rural development in many developing countries.

“For more than three decades, IFAD has led some of the UN’s most successful development efforts aimed at the rural poor,” said United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in June 2008.

Today’s soaring food prices have brought global recognition of the compelling need to increase agricultural productivity and production, making IFAD’s mandate more central than ever to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

IFAD is an international financial institution and a specialized agency of the United Nations, dedicated to enabling poor rural people to overcome poverty.  During Lennart Båge’s term of office, particular emphasis has been placed on working in partnership - with developing country governments, with poor rural farmers and their organizations, other civil society organizations and the private sector, as well as with United Nations agencies and the international development community as a whole. Over the last few years, IFAD has successfully undertaken an ambitious programme of institutional reform, to improve the relevance, efficiency and effectiveness of its work.  In so doing, it has combined growth with quality and has improved its results and impact.

The President of IFAD, under the direction of IFAD’s governing bodies, is responsible for managing the Fund and is the chairperson of its Executive Board. S/he is also a member of the UN Chief Executives Board, chaired by the UN Secretary General. The President serves a four year term, renewable once. 

Lennart Båge’s term of office ends on 31 March 2009 and the term of office for the new president will commence on 1 April.

More information is available at www.ifad.org/election

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Notes to Editors:

• IFAD is a partnership of Member States of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and other developing countries. Its membership currently comprises 165 countries.
• The first President of IFAD, Abdelmuhsin M. Al-Sudeary, from Saudia Arabia, was appointed in 1977. In November 1984 IFAD elected its second President, Idriss Jazairy from Algeria. The third President, Fawzi Al-Sultan from Kuwait, was appointed in January 1993 and the current President, from Sweden, took office in April 2001. Båge appointed for a second four-year term in February 2005.
• IFAD is the only global international financial institution that specializes in enhancing food security and nutrition and that works directly with the poorest rural people.
• Agriculture is a proven engine for poverty reduction. GDP growth generated by agriculture is up to four times more effective in benefiting the poorest half of a country’s population than growth generated by other sectors. IFAD is one of the few major development agencies that have increased investment in agriculture over the past two decades.
• IFAD is fully engaged with its Member States and multilateral and bilateral partners in the global effort to overcome the current food price crisis. In April 2008 IFAD announced that it would make available up to US$200 million from existing loans and grants to provide an immediate boost to agricultural production in the developing world, in the face of high food prices and low food stocks.

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IFAD was created 30 years ago to tackle rural poverty, a key consequence of the droughts and famines of the early 1970s. Since 1978, IFAD has invested more than US$10 billion in low-interest loans and grants that have helped over 400 million very poor rural women and men increase their incomes and provide for their families. IFAD is an international financial institution and a specialized United Nations agency. It is a global partnership of OECD, OPEC and other developing countries. Today, IFAD supports more than 200 programmes and projects in 85 developing countries and one territory.