International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), an international financial institution and a specialized UN agency based in Rome, has pledged $41 million towards agriculture and rural development in Yemen.

The package to develop new projects in the country during the transition period includes $31 million from the fund's core resources as well as $10 million from the Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme (ASAP), a new financing instrument established by the fund to scale up and integrate climate change adaptation in smallholder development projects, said a IFAD statement.

Since 1979, IFAD has been working in Yemen to enhance rural economic growth by supporting national programmes in the agriculture and fisheries sectors and focused on enhancing food security, women’s empowerment and community development.

The on-going IFAD-financed projects in Yemen are worth $230 million, of which $130 million is co-financed from domestic sources and the rest by external financiers, such as the European Union (EU), Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), World Bank (WB).

The IFAD's work in the rural areas of the country is supporting over 1.2 million poor women and men to build their resilience to shocks and conflict, while at the same time, improving their household food security and incomes.

In another major development, the Consultative Group Meeting for Yemen concluded deliberations in Riyadh with an announcement of $6.4 billion in pledges toward the 2012 – 2014 short and medium term priorities of Yemen’s Transitional Program for Stabilization and Development.

More than 280 participants from 27 donor countries, and 36 regional development and international financial institutions as well as observers from NGOs and the private sector attended the meeting held in Saudi Arabia recently.

The Program, developed by Yemen’s Government of National Reconciliation with support from the EU, IsDB, WB and IFAD, aims to enable the country to successfully implement its political transition and accelerate economic recovery.

According to Yemeni government officials, the new resources pledged by IFAD will allow the scaling up of successful investments to cover additional communities and governorates and introduce innovations within its country programme.

These investments are expected to stimulate rural economic growth and create jobs for an additional one million poor women and men in the rural areas of Yemen, they added.-TradeArabia News Service