Food-security bank opens in Lobaye

A food-security bank, the first in the Central African Republic, has opened in the southwestern province of Lobaye, with the support of the Catholic NGO, Caritas, and an American NGO, the International Partnership for Human Development (IPHD), state-owned Radio Centrafrique reported on Thursday. The food-security bank, in Ndolobo, 125 km from the town of Mbaiki in Lobaye, also features silos where farmers' harvests would be stored once sold to the bank for resale later. Caritas, which has been working in the province to fight hunger, inaugurated the bank to help farmers grouped in cooperative societies to achieve food security. Under the project, farmers can obtain credit from the bank, with funds provided by IPHD, which also constructed the bank. The radio reported that an initial 500 farmers would benefit from the food-security bank by obtaining credit to facilitate their farming, and later selling the produce to the bank. The bank would then store the produce for future resale. This food security bank, to be run by a management committee established by farmers, was intended to check the activities of "middle-men", who buy the produce cheaply from farmers for speculative purposes during times of food shortages. The province of Lobaye often experiences shortages of foodstuff such as groundnuts and rice. The IPHD has already disbursed US $13,645, which spent on building the bank. The local population contributed $2,000 towards the construction, and also provided the manpower and building materials such as stones. IPHD Representative Cristian Balan was quoted as urging the residents of Lobaye to consider the bank as a means for achieving food security.