JUBA, July 4 (Xinhua) -- South Sudan's ministry of agriculture and food security has pledged to inject about 5 million U.S. dollars to the country's Agricultural Bank to offer short and medium term loans to farmers across the East African nation, a senior official said Tuesday.
Rual Makuei Thiang, Managing Director of the Agricultural Bank of South Sudan told Xinhua during an interview that the scheme is part of the Comprehensive Agriculture Master Plan launched early this year that seeks eradicate hunger in the war-torn East African nation through financing agribusiness.
He added that the project is a government-led strategy to cultivate 1 million hectares of land by end of the agriculture season in 2018.
"We are helping our country so that instead of it being a food-importing country, we want to become an exporting country. This is our plan as a bank to encourage people to cultivate," Thiang said.
A report by the UN and government released last month warned that food insecurity has deteriorated South Sudan as the number of people struggling to get food increased from 4.9 million in February to 6 million -the highest level of food insecurity ever experienced in South Sudan.
Thiang said to abate the situation, the bank has already invested some money to be disbursed as short term loans to supply 672000 liters of fuel to farmers across the war-torn country and the remaining funds would be provided before end of the 2018 Agriculture season.
He said the scheme will be managed by a select committee involving state ministers of Agriculture, Cooperatives, Agricultural Bank of South Sudan and Farmers Union.
"The current economic and food crisis can only be improved through crop production. We can do it if we make agriculture as a priority because this country is gifted with resources. We are challenged on how we can put these resources on table for people to eat," Thiang said.
