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West Africa: Ecowas Bank to Provide $1 Billion to Support Regional Agriculture
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Leadership (Abuja)
21 May 2008
Posted to the web 21 May 2008
The ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development (EBID) has agreed to provide $1 billion annually to ministers meeting on soaring cost of foodstuff, the EBID have agreed to provide $1 billion annually to support agricultural productivity in West Africa as part of the region's contribution towards resolving the ranging food crisis.
This was part of the outcome of a one-day extraordinary meeting of the ECOWAS and minister of agriculture, trade and finance held at the ECOWAS commission in Abuja on Monday, May 19, 2008, and preoccupied with escalating cost of basic food items in the region.
"The minister of finance in Nigeria, Dr. Shamsudeen Usman, in his opening address during the meeting said, apart from the economic boom in certain parts of the world, the increase in food price has been, to a large extent, a result of the use of agriculture product as inputs for bio-fuel.
"The high prices have led to malnutrition and also set back the poverty reduction effort of many of our member countries by up to 10 years. The unprecedented rise in food price compounded by the declining value of the dollar and turbulent financial system pose a threat to the economic growth and poverty reduction gains that has been achieved by many of our member states in recent years," said the minister.
Similarly, the EBID contribution is part of the short-term measures agreed by the ministers who also directed the ECOWAS commission to take the lead in mobilising international support to raise the $2 billion required in emergency food support for the most vulnerable group, the 44.4 million people living in abject poverty in the region.
However, other short-term measures agreed by the minister was the need to invest $4 billion between 2008 and 2010 to boost agricultural productivity, mostly in the form of input support for small family farms who constitute the backbone of the regions agriculture.
Well, in the long-term plans, member states agreed to improve their budgetary allocation to agriculture, invest in local fertiliser production and seed multiplication, subsidise agricultural production, encourage the provision of concessionary credit to the sector as well as provide infrastructure that will support agricultural productivity.
More suggestion came forward as the minister suggested that ECOWAS should assist in the coordination of the bulk purchase of basic food items for a group of member states in the short-term as it will enable the region get discount for such purchase..
They also stressed on the need to implement the provision of the ECOWAS Common Agriculture Policy (ECOWAP) that provides for the establishment of a regional information markets system, the creation of an efficient processing storage and marketing value chairs and the enhancement of food security stocks.
In a related idea, they called for a reorientation programme for community citisens to change this task for imported foodstuffs while oil-producing member states encouraged to support the non-oil producing states in the spirit of regional solidarity.
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NGO's in the short-term, while in the long-term run, they suggested that sensitive products be included in the negotiation of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) and World Trade Regional Organisation (WTO) negotiation to support regional food security.
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