More than US $40 m pumped in food relief and agriculture in 2003

Global energy giant ChevronTexaco and American aid agencies pumped more than US $40 million into Angolan food relief, agriculture and education projects in 2003, a company official told IRIN on Thursday. "We are running the projects in the provinces of Benguela, Bie, Huambo and Huila," Fernando Paiva, ChevronTexaco's director of public and governmental relations told IRIN. The company was also set to launch a micro-credit bank in Angola later this year, he added. The projects were initiated by ChevronTexaco, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the NGOs, CARE, World Vision, Africare and Save the Children. About 900,000 people had benefited so far. The bulk of the financial aid, about $32 million, was taken up by food relief projects, while about $4.3 million had gone towards providing seeds to farmers, and $1.3 million on other agricultural projects being implemented by the state-run Institute for Agronomic Research and the Institute for Agronomic Development. "We have also spent about $2.3 million on agriculture courses and research at the Institute for Agronomic Research in Huambo," Paiva said. In addition, the aid partners were running a $3 million agricultural programme in the Cabinda enclave, and were setting up other agricultural projects in the northern province of Zaire. The state-run Angola Press agency reported this week that the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Gilberto Lutucuta, had raised concerns at the opening of a national conference on "The role of Agriculture in the Socio-economic Development of Angola", when he said the government intended to eradicate poverty by making the country self-sufficient in the production of essential crops, and hoped the conference would help change the banking institutions' perceptions of the agricultural sector. In the wake of comments by Lutucuta that Angolan banking institutions were reluctant to offer loans to the agricultural sector, Paiva said ChevronTexaco was in the process of establishing a microcredit facility that would begin operating later this year.