In the early 197s, agricultural crops failed in many parts of the world, resulting in a "food crisis". With the active promotion of developing countries, the United Nations convened the World Food Conference in Rome in November 1974, 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 the International Fund for Agricultural Development came into effect on November 13th, 1977. IFAD was established in December 1977, and started its business activities on January 1, 1978. Now it has developed into one of the three major agencies of the United Nations in food and agriculture.
At present, IFAD has 162 member countries, which are divided into three categories, namely, I-member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, with 21 members; Class II countries-member countries of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, ***12 countries; Class III 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 alleviation and agricultural development in developing countries.
in terms of increasing grain production, 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) Long-term projects are mainly to improve and improve farmers' production and living conditions by means of water conservancy, reclamation and immigration. (3) Policy support projects are mainly to help the government solve the capital demand for 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, but not for state-owned enterprises or private capital.
II. Sources of funds and financing
The sources of funds of IFAD include: ① the 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's funds is negotiated by three categories of countries to make total pledges. Member States in categories I and II are major donors to IFAD; Group III member countries are the main recipients of IFAD, but they also donate some funds on a voluntary basis. IFAD replenishes its funds every 3-5 years. So far, * * * has made five pledges for supplementary funds, totaling 4.1 billion special drawing rights (including founding funds).
III. Use of funds: Grant and loan are used for technical assistance, which shall not exceed 7.5% of the annual work plan.
loans are divided into three categories, namely:
highly concessional loans, with an annual service charge of .75% (1% before 1994) and a loan period of 4 years (5 years before 1994), including a grace period of 1 years. Such loans can be used by countries whose per capita gross national product does not exceed 85 dollars;
Moderately preferential loans, with an annual interest rate equivalent to 5% of the floating interest rate of other international financial institutions (currently 3.54%), with a loan period of 2 years, including a grace period of 5 years. Countries with a per capita gross national product of 86-1,35 dollars are applicable to such loans;
Ordinary loans, with an annual interest rate equivalent to 1% of the floating interest rate of other international financial institutions (currently 7.7%), have a loan period of 15-18 years, including a grace period of 3 years, and are suitable for developing countries with a per capita GNP of more than US$ 1,36.
The loan projects involve nine areas, such as agricultural development, rural development, credit, irrigation, animal husbandry, fishery, resettlement, storage, processing and sales of agricultural products, and scientific research promotion and training. Recently, it has emphasized supporting poor rural women.
IV. Organization
The organization of IFAD includes: management meeting; Executive board; Secretariat (President and his staff).
1. Management Assembly (Management Council)
The management assembly of IFAD 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 General Assembly holds an annual meeting every year to review the work report of last year, the work plan and budget for next year, supplementary pledge of funds, election of a new president, revision of loan policies and loan conditions, etc. Our government has always sent high-level delegations to attend its previous management meetings.
2. Executive Board
The Executive Board of IFAD is composed of 18 member countries with directors, elected at the annual meeting of the Management Assembly for a term of three years, and is re-elected by one third every year. Authorized by the Management Assembly, the Executive Board presides over the daily business activities of IFAD. The Chairman of the Executive Board is also the President of IFAD, but has no voting right. The Executive Board generally holds meetings in April, September and December every year to examine and approve loan and grant projects and related policy matters.
14. Secretariat
The Secretariat is composed of the President and the resource strategy department, project management department, management and personnel service department, etc. 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 the staff and presides over daily affairs. The current president of IFAD is Swedish Lennart Bage. The first three presidents were Kuwaiti Fawzi Al-Sultan, Saudi Arabian Abdel Muhsin al-Soudry and Algerian Idriss Jazairy.
IFAD * * * has 265 staff members, including 111 professionals from 49 member countries. Two people in China work in the secretariat of IFAD.
In order to avoid the huge organization 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, the World Bank, etc.) to provide technical services for its projects, project preparation, monitoring and evaluation, loan management and other matters.
V. Principles of IFAD's aid project to China
On October 27th, 1989, the loan strategy for China determined by IFAD included the following eight points:
(1) Border poverty-stricken areas should be given priority;
(2) Emphasis should be placed on helping poor farmers to carry out collective development activities;
(3) Special attention should be paid to strengthening the participation of farmers' organizations and other forms of organizations;
(4) New application should be encouraged.
(5) Encourage institutional innovation to help remote and poor farmers obtain production inputs, credit and support services;
(6) Support market sales to increase the cash income of poor farmers;
(7) Provide financial assistance to labor-intensive processing enterprises managed by the beneficiaries themselves;
(8) Emphasize business diversification to correct the past practice of focusing only on food production.
According to the experience and lessons of IFAD's projects around the world, the following eight points are added:
⑼ Feasibility of determining the beneficiary,
⑽Preference for ethnic minority areas,
⑾Emphasis on food security and food and clothing,
⑿Provision of loan limit according to project activities, and
⑿Lending institutions.
[14] On the basis that contiguous planting experiments can make better use of land and water resources, contiguous development is encouraged,
[14] promotion, skills training and the development of local institutions are supported, and
[14] the project area should be appropriately reduced in order to more effectively determine the beneficiaries and facilitate the project implementation.
VI. Cooperation between China and IFAD
In July p>1979, the delegation of China took the opportunity of attending the World Conference on Rural Reform and Rural Development in Rome to get in touch with officials of IFAD and started cooperation between the two sides.
In the winter of p>1979, while attending the FAO Conference, the China delegation negotiated with IFAD officials about its membership, and then formally joined IFAD in 198, promising to make pledges. In the second half of 198, China applied for the "Northern Grassland and Animal Husbandry Development Project" and started substantive cooperation with IFAD.
with the development of business, the exchange of visits between senior officials of both sides has become increasingly frequent. The first three presidents of IFAD: Al Sultan, Soudry and Yazeli have visited China successively and met with Chinese leaders. When the leaders of our country visited Italy, they also met with 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 in 198, it has pledged a total of 3,338,5 USD to IFAD, including: initial pledge of 6, USD and 6, RMB; Pledged $1.3 million for the first supplementary fund; Pledged $1.8 million for the second supplementary fund; Pledged $8 million for the third supplementary fund; Pledged $8.5 million for the fourth supplementary fund; The fifth supplementary fund pledged $1 million.
As a Class III member country, China used highly concessional loans and moderately concessional loans alternately in the early days of cooperation with IFAD. Since 1987, IFAD has been providing highly concessional loans to China. So far, IFAD has provided 16 preferential loans to China, with an agreed loan amount of 4 million US dollars. IFAD loan projects cover 15 poverty-stricken counties (cities) in 17 provinces (municipalities and autonomous regions) in China, and about 9 million poor farmers directly benefit.