IFAD to supply US$18.07 million to Bangladesh for COVID-19 recovery activities
The International Fund for Agricultural Expansion (IFAD) provides Bangladesh with yet another loan of US$ 18.07 million to rebuild microenterprises and support smallholders, who've been damaged adversely by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The excess financing will scale up activities beneath the ongoing Promoting Agricultural Commercialization and Enterprises (PACE) project, which has been implemented by the apex expansion organization of Bangladesh, the Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation (PKSF).
The funding will complement the federal government of Bangladesh (GOB) and PKSF’s efforts to assist microenterprises and smallholders and recover the severely influenced rural economy from COVID-19 induced losses.
This additional loan will finance activities from January 2021 to December 2022 to help restore microenterprises in the farm and non-farm sectors, and also, scale up and strengthen successful value chains beneath the PACE project.
IFAD’s South Asia Hub Brain, Ms Rasha Omar, said, “The impact of the pandemic is long-term in characteristics and requires building back again the economy better. The additional resource is IFAD’s response for rehabilitation of microenterprises and smallholder households who dropped their businesses and profit as a result of COVID-19 induced constraints. The initiative will restore their livelihoods and develop strategies to reduce future risks.”
The Speed project, jointly financed by IFAD, GOB and PKSF, was launched in 2015 with the purpose of improving profitable work at home opportunities for microentrepreneurs nationwide and create employment for the extreme and moderate the indegent.
To date, the Tempo task has directly benefitted about 321,000 microentrepreneurs and other actors engaged in worth chains in go for farm and non-farm sectors through 74 worth chain and 25 technology transfer sub-projects by giving them with microcredit support, complex assistance, and technological promotion, and facilitating market gain access to.
With the excess loan, the full total value of the PACE task now amounts to US$129.81 million, with IFAD financing of US$58.07million, and over another two years, the job will directly benefit another 168,000 beneficiaries, including 48,000 microentrepreneurs and 120,000 value chain actors.
With the increased demand for finance to rebuild the rural economy of Bangladesh, this initiative by IFAD and PKSF to revive the microfinance sector will raise the disbursement of loans to microenterprises to restore and build back better their business and agricultural activities, and improve their resilience to soak up the shocks that could be induced by future crises.
In addition, PACE provides awareness building training on COVID19 coverage protocols produced by PKSF to manage health insurance and hygiene on the production premises to avoid transmission of COVID-19 and other foreseeable future epidemics. The project additional plans to increase the physical environment of wet markets and use market management committees to improve cleanliness, develop health insurance and hygiene recognition among buyers and retailers, and introduce a system to ensure an effective flow of individual movements to separate entry and exit traffic.
In order to react to the developing demand of shifting to e-commerce to market contactless transaction, with the excess financing PKSF will work with existing e-commerce businesses to facilitate the development of a microenterprise friendly program covering the entire supply chain. The program will eventually come to be interactive and offer advisory offerings to farmers, incorporating pandemic management.
The additional resources will be committed to three broad agri-organization subsectors: horticulture; fisheries and aquaculture; and poultry and livestock including prepared products, and cover 40 districts in Barishal, Chattogram, Dhaka, Khulna, Rajshahi, Rangpur, and Sylhet Divisions.
IFAD includes a long-standing partnership with PKSF and Rate may be the fourth IFAD-financed job with this apex creation organization. Furthermore, IFAD is also financing a fifth job known as the Rural Microenterprise Transformation Project (RMTP), which was released in August 2020 and has a total budget of US$200million, which IFAD’s contribution is US$81 million.
IFAD has a long-standing partnership with PKSF and Rate is the fourth IFAD-financed task with this apex production organization. Furthermore, IFAD can be financing a fifth job named the Rural Microenterprise Transformation Project (RMTP), which was introduced in August 2020 and includes a total budget of US$200million, which IFAD’s contribution is US$81 million.
