Media backgrounder MB/01/09

Rome, 17 February 2009 – A US$150,000 IFAD grant to the Kingdom of Bhutan will support government efforts to improve food security and agricultural production. The grant is funded through a special Partnership Agreement between IFAD and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland.

The grant agreement was signed today in Rome by Pema Gyamtsho, Minister of Agriculture of the Kingdom of Bhutan, and Lennart Båge, IFAD President.  Marjatta Rasi, Undersecretary of State of Finland and IFAD's Governor, and Riika Laatu, Minister Counsellor, Embassy of Finland in Rome attended the ceremony.

Bhutan is a rugged, mountainous country in the eastern Himalayas. Currently agricultural land accounts for only 7.8 per cent of Bhutan’s total land area, and it is decreasing every year. This small country grant, designed at the request of the Ministry of Agriculture, will ensure the long-term availability of land for food production by helping to zone the country’s territory and delineate protected areas for agricultural production.

To date IFAD has funded six rural development projects in the Kingdom of Bhutan for a total cost of US$42 million.

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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 territory.