WHITE NILE PUMP

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The White Nile Pump Schemes Rehabilitation Project will, over five years, help rehabilitate some 174 pump schemes on both banks of the White Nile south of Khartoum, where cotton, sorghum, groundnuts and wheat are grown. The project will improve levels of productivity of crops, expand cotton exports, raise incomes for tenants and help place the schemes on a sound financial footing. It will contribute LSd 371 million to Sudan's public revenues over the project life and benefit directly some 28,000 tenant families. The project will accomplish these objectives by providing agricultural machinery, equipment and spare parts; workshops and fuel storage facilities; motor vehicles and a telecommunications network; rehabilitation of pumpsets, pumphouses and irrigation distribution systems; incremental annual farm inputs; offices, stores and staff housing; measures to help strengthen management, administration and training; studies for further development of the White Nile area and preparation of a follow-up project. Among the major risks are shortages and delays in local currency requirements; realization of projected yields; shortfalls in foreign exchange needed for current operations and indequate cotton prices to producers; administrative shortcomings.