Market access and sustainable rural development top agenda

Rome, 2 August 2010 – The President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Kanayo F. Nwanze, will meet with Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom Caballeros and other high-level government officials in Guatemala City on 5 August to discuss solutions for rural poverty, environmental challenges and indigenous people’s issues in this Central American nation.  

On the first day of his stay in the capital city, Nwanze will meet with representatives from the IFAD-funded Rural Development Program for Las Verapaces (PRODEVER) and review progress of the program’s poverty-reduction and market-access projects. Nwanze will then head out to the Guatemalan countryside to visit IFAD co-financed projects in the departments of El Quiché and Las Verapaces.

The US$26 million PRODEVER program in Las Verapaces, which started in 2001 with financing from IFAD, has helped some 1800 farmers and small business owners to increase their incomes. The program has successfully improved market access by creating several infrastructure and training projects, including the construction or rehabilitation of approximately 169 km of rural roads. Project participants have also built 12 new cardamom processing centres and eight new cacao facilities.

“PRODEVER has provided smallholder farmers with the training and tools they need to become independent entrepreneurs,” said Josefina Stubbs, Director of IFAD’s Latin America and the Caribbean Division. “They have also created lasting mechanisms to ensure small-scale farmers and rural producers have access to national and international markets. Over the long haul, this increased market access means that the poor rural people of Guatemala are more likely to break the cycle of poverty.”

The PRODEVER program has also helped over 1600 women learn to read, generated over 300 new jobs for the region and opened new international markets for local producers.

“Guatemala has broken into the big leagues. Thanks to programs like PRODEVER, smallholder producers are now exporting around 1 million mandarin oranges to Wal-Mart,” said Stubbs. “They also succeeded in exponentially increasing exports of coffee, cardamom and other speciality produce.”

In El Quiché, the President of IFAD will meet with leaders from the IFAD-supported National Rural Development Program Phase 1: The Western Region. Known locally as FIDA Occidente, the $48 million program is designed to reduce poverty levels and discrimination in this predominantly indigenous area. IFAD is providing $30 million of the program’s funding.

“We are starting out by providing some of the basic services necessary to build a better life, like water, roads and training,” said Stubbs. “And we are receiving reports indicating that we are succeeding. With the increased productivity that modern irrigation systems and improved market access can bring, the people in these communities are no longer going hungry and the children are able to go to school.”

Like its sister project in Las Verapaces, FIDA Occidente also has a gender-based approach, providing literacy training to women and job training for young people.

Since 1986, IFAD has provided $114 million in loans for eight projects in Guatemala at a total cost of $231 million. The projects have helped an estimated 120,000 households in rural Guatemala.

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Notes to editors

Journalists are invited to attend the presentation of PRODEVER in the National Palace on August 5 from 3 to 5pm. The presentation will be immediately followed by a press conference addressed by the President of IFAD, Kanayo F. Nwanze. The Director of IFAD’s Latin America and the Caribbean Division, Josefina Stubbs, will be available for press interviews.

Press release No.: IFAD/49/2010

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The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) works with poor rural people to enable them to grow and sell more food, increase their incomes and determine the direction of their own lives. Since 1978, IFAD has invested over US$12 billion in grants and low-interest loans to developing countries, empowering more than 350 million people to break out of poverty. IFAD is an international financial institution and a specialized UN agency based in Rome – the UN’s food and agricultural hub. It is a unique partnership of 165 members from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), other developing countries and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).