Press release No.: IFAD/02/09

Rome, 27 January 2009 − A US$12.3 million grant from IFAD to the Republic of Tajikistan for the Khatlon Livelihoods Support Project will help reduce poverty, increase incomes and improve the lives of farmers in 250 villages in five districts.

The grant agreement was signed today in Rome by Safarali Nazhmudinov, Minister of Finance of the Republic of Tajikistan and Jessie Rose Mabutas, IFAD Assistant President.

Khatlon is the poorest region of Tajikistan, where 78 per cent of the rural population is poor. Most farmers in the region are constrained by low productivity due to land degradation, limited availability of inputs and credit, lack of irrigation facilities, and poor access to improved technologies and markets.

The project will help to address some of these constraints by organizing farmers and providing them with improved technologies, and by financing productive infrastructure schemes based on community priorities. Some 18,750 households are expected to benefit from the project, which will ensure that at least half of the beneficiaries are women.

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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 .6  billion in low-interest loans and grants that have helped over approximately  350  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 close to 250 programmes and projects in 87 developing countries and one