In the early 1970s, due to the poor harvest in many parts of the world, there was a "food crisis". With the active promotion of developing countries, the United Nations convened the World Food Conference 1974 1 1 in Rome in June, and decided to establish the International Fund for Agricultural Development (hereinafter referred to as "IFAD") to provide funds for agricultural development, especially food production, in developing countries.
The United Nations Agreement on the Establishment of an International Fund for Agricultural Development came into effect on June 1977, June 65438+1October 65438+March 3. IFAD was established in 1977 12, and started its business activities from 1978 10. Now it has developed into one of the three major food and agriculture organizations of the United Nations.
At present, IFAD has 162 member countries, which are divided into three categories, namely, country I, a member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, * * * 21; Class II countries-member countries of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, *** 12 countries; The third category of countries-developing countries, *** 129 countries.
The purpose of IFAD is to "raise funds and provide them to developing member countries on preferential terms for developing food production, improving people's food nutrition and gradually eliminating rural poverty". IFAD is an international financial institution that provides financial services for poverty reduction and agricultural development in developing countries.
In increasing grain output, there are short-term projects, long-term projects and policy support projects. ① Short-term projects mainly improve crop yield by improving land, irrigation and drainage, improving varieties, and improving farming system and management level. (2) The long-term project is mainly to improve and improve the production and living conditions of farmers by means of building water conservancy projects, reclamation and resettlement. (3) Policy support projects are mainly to help the government solve the capital needs of agricultural policy investment such as land, price, credit, market and subsidies.
In terms of poverty eradication, IFAD mainly emphasizes that loan projects should be directly used for individual farmers and rural women with poor economic conditions, rather than for state-owned enterprises or private capital.
Second, the source of funds and financing
IFAD's sources of funds include: ① Founding fund; (2) Supplementary contributions from Member States; (3) Special donations from non-member countries and other sources; ④ Investment income of IFAD.
The financing of IFAD is negotiated by three types of countries and the total amount of pledges is put forward. The first and second member countries are the main donors of IFAD; The third group of member countries are the main recipients of IFAD, but they also donate some funds on a voluntary basis. IFAD supplements funds every 3-5 years. Up to now, * * * has made five commitments to replenish funds, totaling 465,438+billion SDR (including initial funds).
Use of funds: grants and loans.
The grant is used for technical assistance and does not exceed 7.5% of the annual work plan.
Loans are divided into three categories, namely:
Highly concessional loan, with service fee of 0.75% per year (0% before 1994) and loan term of 40 years (50 years before1994), including grace period of 10 year. Countries whose per capita GNP does not exceed $805 can use this kind of loan;
Moderate preferential loans, the annual interest rate is equivalent to 50% of the floating interest rate of other international financial institutions (currently 3.54%), and the loan period is 20 years, with a grace period of 5 years. Such loans are suitable for countries with per capita gross national product between 806- 1305 US dollars;
Ordinary loans, the annual interest rate is equivalent to 100% of the floating interest rate of other international financial institutions (now 7.07%), and the loan term is 15- 18 years, including a three-year grace period, which is suitable for developing countries with per capita GNP exceeding 1306 USD.
The loan projects involve nine areas, including agricultural development, rural development, credit, irrigation, animal husbandry, fishery, resettlement, agricultural product storage, processing and sales, scientific research promotion and training. Recently, support for poor rural women has been emphasized.
Fourth, organization
The organizational structure of IFAD includes: management assembly; Executive board; Secretariat (Chairman and his staff).
1. Management meeting (Management Committee)
The IFAD Management Assembly is composed of all member countries and is the highest authority of IFAD. Member States each send a director and an alternate director; Directors have the right to vote, and alternate directors have the right to vote only in the absence of directors. The management meeting holds an annual meeting every year to review the work report of the previous year, the work plan and budget for the next year, supplementary fund commitments, election of a new president, modification of loan policies and loan conditions, etc. Our government has always sent high-level delegations to its previous management meetings.
executive board
The Executive Board of IFAD is composed of 65,438+08 members, who are elected at the annual meeting of the Management Assembly for a term of three years, and one third of them are re-elected every year. Authorized by the Management Assembly, the Executive Board presides over the daily business activities of IFAD. The Chairman of the Executive Committee is also the President of IFAD, but has no voting right. Usually, the Executive Board meets in April, September and February every year to review and approve loan and grant projects and related policy matters.
14. Secretariat.
The Secretariat consists of the President and the following departments: Resource Strategy Department, Project Management Department and Management Personnel Service Department. The president is the legal representative and chief executive officer of IFAD, with a term of four years and can only be re-elected once. The president appoints a vice president and three assistant presidents, and leads all staff and presides over daily affairs. The current chairman of IFAD is Swedish Lennart Bage. The first three presidents were Fazi Sultan of Kuwait, Abdul-Mohsin Sudri of Saudi Arabia and Idriss Jazairy of Algeria.
IFAD * * * has 265 staff members, including11professionals from 49 member countries. Two people in China work in the secretariat of IFAD.
In order to avoid being too big and occupying too much funds, IFAD pays attention to using other United Nations agencies (such as the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Office for Project Services, FAO, the United Nations Department for Development Support and Management Services and the World Bank). ) provide technical services for its projects, such as project preparation, monitoring and evaluation, and loan management.
Verb (abbreviation of verb) Principles of IFAD's aid projects in China
1989,10127 October, the loan strategy for China determined by IFAD includes the following eight points:
(1) Give priority to poor border areas,
(2) Emphasize helping poor farmers to carry out collective development activities,
(3) Pay special attention to strengthening the participation of farmers' organizations and other forms of organizations,
(4) Encourage the use of new and applicable technologies,
(5) Encourage institutional innovation and help remote and poor farmers to obtain production inputs, credit and support services.
(6) Support market sales and increase the cash income of poor farmers.
(seven) to provide financial assistance to the labor-intensive processing enterprises operated by the beneficiaries themselves,
(8) Emphasis on diversification to correct the past practice of focusing only on grain production.
According to the experience and lessons of IFAD in implementing projects around the world, the following eight points are added:
(9) Feasibility of the method for determining the beneficiary,
⑽ Incline to minority areas,
⑾ Pay attention to food security and food and clothing,
⑿ According to the loan limit stipulated in the project activities,
(13) Lending institutions and village committees should be strengthened to help issue and effectively use loans.
14. Encourage contiguous development on the basis that contiguous planting experiments can make better use of land and water resources.
⒂ Support extension, skills training and the development of local institutions,
[16] The project area should be appropriately reduced in order to identify the beneficiaries more effectively and promote the project implementation.
The intransitive verb China's cooperation with IFAD.
1979 In July, the delegation of China took the opportunity of attending the World Conference on Rural Reform and Rural Development in Rome, and made contact with officials of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, which started the cooperation between the two sides.
1979 In the winter, while attending the FAO conference, the delegation of China negotiated with IFAD officials about their membership, and then formally joined IFAD in 1980, promising to make pledges. 1980 In the second half of the year, China applied for the "Northern Grassland Animal Husbandry Development Project" and started substantive cooperation with IFAD.
With the development of business, exchanges between senior officials of both sides have become increasingly frequent. The first three presidents of IFAD, Sultan, Sudari and Acheli, visited China successively and met with the leaders of China. When Chinese leaders visited Italy, they also met the then President and other senior officials, and did a lot of work to promote friendly cooperation between the two sides.
Since China joined IFAD on 1980, it has pledged a total of 30,338,500 US dollars to IFAD, including an initial pledge of 600,000 US dollars and 600,000 yuan; The first phase of supplementary funds pledged $65,438+$300,000; The second phase of supplementary funds pledged $65,438+$800,000; Pledged $8 million for the third supplementary fund; Pledged $8.5 million for the fourth replenishment fund; Pledge of the Fifth Supplementary Fund100,000 USD.
China, as a three-category member country, used high preferential loans and medium preferential loans alternately in the initial stage of cooperation with IFAD. IFAD has been providing highly concessional loans to China since 1987. So far, IFAD has provided China with a preferential loan of 16, with an agreed loan amount of US$ 400 million. IFAD loan projects cover 150 poor counties (cities) in China 17 provinces (cities and autonomous regions), and about 9 million poor farmers directly benefit.