IFAD President Gilbert Fossoun Houngbo speaks at the session (Source: VNA) Rome (VNA) – A Vietnamese delegation led by Deputy Director of DebtManagement and External Finance under the Ministry ofFinance Hoang Hai attended the 41st Session of the Governing Council of the International Fund forAgricultural Development (IFAD) in Rome, Italy on February 13-14.
Theevent, themed “From fragility to long-termresilience: Investing in sustainable rural economics", alsogathered representatives from 175 other member nations of the fund.
In his opening speech, IFAD President GilbertFossoun Houngbo stressed the need to increase investment for long-termdevelopment in rural areas for a more stable and prosperous world.
Poverty can be the cause of instability and conflict, Houngbo said, noting thatmany conflicts and humanitarian crises happened in 2017, forcing many people toleave their homes and leading to immigration at the record level.
Many areas over the world have also experienced extreme weather and increasing poverty,he added.
He cited the data of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) saying that about 1.6 billionpeople in the world lived in fragility in 2016, 480 million of them wereextremely poor.
He attributed the situation to instability, conflicts, inconsistent management,poor institutions, and inability to recover from economic crises and naturaldisasters.
Long-term investment in rural areas is the basic element to create stability,he said.
IFAD’s support projects in 2010-2015 helped 24 million people on the planetescape from poverty, he noted.
Participants focused their discussion on ways to sustainably invest in ruralareas. They also set a goal of backing a nonrefundable assistance and loanprogramme of IFADworth 3.5 billion USD to promote poverty alleviation in developing countries.
IFAD, a specialised agency of the United Nationsbased in Rome, was established as an international financial institution in1977 as one of the major outcomes of the 1974 World Food Conference.
Since 1978, IFAD has provided 19.7 billion USD in non-refundable aid and low-interestloans for developing countries through many projects on poverty reduction,benefiting about 474 million people.-VNA
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