Windhoek — Minister of Agriculture, Water and Forestry, John Mutorwa said Namibia is encouraged that the World Food Summit that was held in Rome this week considered the improvement of food security governance as parts of its agenda.

He said if it was realized, it would definitely put Namibia in a better position to timely mobilize and disburse resources for food emergency situations as well as to seek for long-lasting solutions.

"Let us therefore make use of this opportunity to come up with implementable and cost effective strategies to reform the institutions that are currently responsible for the governance of world food security. Namibia is very concerned to note that despite the commitments and pledges made during our previous world food summits, the number of hungry people in the world continue to increase unabated.

This trend will not allow us to achieve the target that we have set for ourselves to reduce hunger by half by the year 2015. It is therefore imperative that we consider the reform and strengthening of the existing food security agencies as a pressing emergency. However, let such reform be done within the framework and budget of the existing institutions wherever possible," he said.

He said in line with the Maputo AU Summit of 2003, and the 2004 SADC heads of state and government Dar-es-Salaam Declaration on agriculture and food security, Namibia is fully committed to increase the allocation of the national budget to the agriculture sector.

"We therefore support the efforts that are being made to reverse the decline in the allocation of the Official Development Assistance (ODA) to agriculture. Equally, Namibia would like to add her voice to the call on the International as well as the regional Financial Institutions to increase their lending portfolio for agriculture," he said.

Mutorwa said Namibia supports the call for International Financial Institutions to increase their lending portfolio for agriculture, we are equally concerned that Namibia will not benefit from increased financial resources at those institutions because of her current classification as a middle income country.

"With this classification, Namibia finds it difficult to borrow funds from International Financial Institutions for her agricultural programmes at favourable interest rates. This situation puts a heavy burden on our already stretched financial resources, which in turn, impacts negatively on the implementation of food security programmes, in particular, and the public investment in agriculture in general.

For this reason, Namibia would like to reiterate her call to the United Nations to consider the revision of her current classification as a middle income country. Namibia would therefore like to propose that the formula that is currently used to determine the classification of countries should be revised to reflect the reality on the ground. In Namibia the question of general well-being of the population remains a major preoccupation of the authorities in my country.

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita used to date is not adequate because it does not take into consideration wealth distribution and access to socials services to the majority of the citizens," he said.