The World Bank has announced funding of $30 million to help boost the productivity and climate resilience of Kyrgyzstan’s dairy and horticulture agri-food clusters.
The project will be complemented by a $5 million grant from the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program.
“Recognizing agriculture as a cornerstone of the Kyrgyz Republic’s economy, the World Bank prioritizes the sector alongside energy and water in its new 2024-2028 Country Partnership Framework. The new project marks the beginning of a series of initiatives designed to support the Cabinet of Ministers’ vision for a modernized, competitive, and climate-resilient agricultural sector,” reported Tatiana Proskuryakova, World Bank Regional Director for Central Asia.
Running until 2029, the initiative will help producers, processors, and other value chain participants to improve the quality and volume of their produce, access to markets through investment loans, training and capacity building, seed system enhancement, breeding, and information management.
It will also focus on enhancing climate adaptation and mitigation through the promotion of climate-smart technologies as well as the employment of digital technology for accessing market information.
The project will directly support 8,000 beneficiaries including individual farmers and producers, producer groups, small and medium processors, and other value chain participants in the agri-food clusters of dairy and horticulture.
Indirect beneficiaries, numbering 20,000, will comprise farming communities and households of loan and training recipients, in addition to members of broader rural communities who will be afforded better jobs and opportunities to generate income.
