SOHAG/MINUFIYA AGR.DEV.I

closed

The project seeks to stimulate the process of modernization of Egyptian agriculture, to strengthen rural institutions to enable them to promote economic development, and, through investments in two selected governorates in the old lands, to increase crop and livestock productivity. It would provide credit to cooperatives and farmers for purchase of tractors and accessory implements, threshers and irrigation pumps; and finance equipment for two experimental mechanization farms and a pilot irrigation farm, construction of rural stores, technical assistance for extension, cooperative and agricultural credit institutions, and preparation of future livestock and credit projects. The project would initiate a process of rehabilitation of the agricultural credit system. Not less than 80 percent of credits for farm machinery would be earmarked for agricultural coperatives in order to benefit 52,500 smallholder farmers, 65 percent of whom now have incomes below the relative poverty level. The project is expected to increase their incomes by at least 10 percent in six years.