Oliver Kazunga, Senior Business Reporter
THE Government has secured $242 million from the European Union (EU) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation to support the agriculture sector in the 2017/18 farming season.
According to the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa), out of the above figure, $140 million was committed by the EU while $102 million was being funded by the Food Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
This was disclosed during a post compact high-level business meeting of the Zimbabwe Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme’s (CAADP) held in Harare recently.
“The funding will support priority areas such as increased productivity through improved natural resource management, international and domestic market development, Food and Nutrition Security.
“Others are gender sensitive agricultural research and coordination, as well as monitoring and evaluation,” said Comesa.
It said domestic and international private sector, co-operating partners such as the EU pledged to support sustainable land and water management, value chain development, trade capacity and business development, resilience and climate change, food and nutrition security and quick response and early warning systems.
Under the Zim-Asset cluster on food and nutrition, the country proposes the implementation of the CAADP mooted by the African Union.
Comesa is implanting the initiative whose objective inter alia is to compel governments to allocate at least 10 percent of their national budgets to agriculture.
FAO will support policy and institutional frameworks, competitiveness of the agricultural sector and resilience and climate smart agriculture.
The Government has since committed to incrementally fund the sector to achieve 10 percent target as per the CAADP to leverage more investment resources.
Zimbabwe’s investment plan is aimed at strengthening agriculture input and output markets, which is key to the country fight against poverty through agricultural-led development.
On Monday, Small to Medium Enterprises and Co-operative Development Minister Sithembiso Nyoni launched $7.6 million under the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Fund for International Development to support poverty alleviation projects in Zimbabwe’s three major poverty-stricken provinces.
The Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency latest poverty atlas, Matabeleland North, Masvingo and Manicaland are the country’s major poverty stricken regions. Each of the three provinces’ seven districts would receive $285 000.
Savings and Credit Co-operatives in income generating projects, livestock development ventures and those ventures seeking to optimise local endowments such as fruit juice manufacturing, fish farming and small scale mining would be supported by Opec Fund for International Development.
The fund also supports projects related to the setting up of entrepreneurial training institutes.
The OFID poverty alleviation project would be implemented over the next four years starting this year.
SACCOs would be supported for cash amounting to a maximum of $10 000 with a 10 percent interest rate per annum.
Livestock development projects can access up to a maximum of $50 000 attracting interest rate of 10 percent.
Entrepreneurs with projects aimed at optimising local resources endowment can also access up to a maximum of $50 000 at 10 percent per annum interest rate.
The loan for all the projects that can be funded under the facility is payable over 12 months.
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