The 11th International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) Value Chain Development Programme (VCDP) Pre-mission team has expressed delight that the Ebonyi government has released a N200 million counterpart fund for the programme’s implementation.

The team leader of the pre-mission team, Babatunde Adebayo, said this on Thursday when he spoke with reporters in Abakaliki.

He said the timely release would assist the programme’s intervention to farmers in the present farming season.

Mr Adebayo, a deputy director in the Federal Ministry of Finance, said the Ebonyi government’s action was uncommon among states participating in the project.

“We have a committee that will go to the concerned states and appeal to them to key into the programme’s ideals on the counterpart funds,” he said.

He said they were in Ebonyi to ascertain how the office was preparing for the 11th support mission, especially areas to be improved upon.

“We inspected projects of the programme across the state and were impressed with what we saw,” he said.

The team leader, however, frowned at the late approval and release of the state office’s budget and promised to communicate with the national programme coordinator of IFAD-VCDP.

“Such late approval is not peculiar to Ebonyi but the other participating states across the country.

“It is a misnomer for budgets to be approved in June when farmers would be anxiously waiting and in dire need of farm inputs. You cannot make approvals in June for a farming season that runs from January to December,” he said.

Musa Dalang, the IFAD–VCDP Rural Institution Gender and Youth Development specialist, said the team was not a witch-hunting exercise but to support and strengthen the capacity of the Ebonyi office for the mission.

Sunday Ituma, the state programme coordinator of IFAD-VCDP, thanked the team for the visit, noting that it will assist the office in preparing adequately for the mission.

(NAN)