GITEGA April 27th (ABP) – The Agricultural and Rural Financial Inclusion Support Project (PAIFAR-B) aims to help 99,200 households get out of poverty, including 5,000 households in extreme vulnerability, by providing them with support to be able to access microcredit, as said in Gitega (center) on Thursday by the coordinator of the said project, Mr. Calixte Masabo, during a workshop launching activities of PAIFAR-B in the provinces of the central region of the country.
Before spreading across the country, this seven-year project began operations in 14 provinces, said Masabo, adding that the overall cost is estimated at US $ 38,500,000, equivalent to nearly 50 billion Burundian francs. Of this amount, he explained, US $ 24,735,000 was provided by IFAD, US $ 8,944,000 by the World Micro Finance Institution (IMF), US $ 2,605,000 by the Burundi government and US $ 2,125,000 by the project beneficiaries.
Speaking on the latter, Mr. Masabo said that PAIFAR-B will channel 61% of its cost to agricultural cooperatives, 19% to milk cooperatives, 9% to joint solidarity groups, 6% to youth self-development associations and the rest to households in extreme poverty. However, Mr. Masabo made it clear that this is not charitable aid or donations, but that it is money that will be issued as a loan and that will undoubtedly have to be recovered later at an interest rate, the amount of which will be communicated shortly by the Ministry of Finance.
The two-day PAIFAR-B launch workshop was attended by representatives of microfinance, agronomists, communal veterinarians, representatives of the provincial directorates of the environment, agriculture and livestock as well as administrative officials at provincial and communal levels in Gitega, Karusi, Muramvya and Muyinga Provinces.
In their interventions, they advocated for the increase of the amount allocated to people in extreme poverty to allow many of the Batwa community to get out of poverty thanks to microcredit. For PAIFAR-B to be successful, they also proposed to focus on gender in its activities.
