Announcement of Turkey Accelerating Completion of Irrigation Systems on June 7, 1984

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20433, U.S.A. BANK NEWS RELEASE NO. 84/88 Contact: Fawzi Rihane June 7, 1984 (202) 477-5325 TURKEY ACCELERATES COMPLETION OF IRRIGATION SYSTEMS Turkey is .accelerating the completion of four major irrigation systems covering about 113,000 hectares (ha). More than 25,000 farm families will benefit will benefit directly from the project, and an additional 20,000 farm laborers will gain temporary employment during the peak labor months. The World Bank is supporting the project with a loan of $115.3 million. The irrigation systems will help increase the value of annual agricultural production by an estimated $107 million when full development is achieved in 1994. And the average income of the 25,000 farm families will increase by about 250 percent. The project will also finance land levelling and surface drainage on about 23,000 ha. Technical assistance will be provided for the Ministry of Agriculture to enable it to analyze the training needs of its extension staff and to design training programs to meet those needs. The government will prepare a ten-year master plan for irrigation that will be designed to increase the areas under irrigation by about 100,000 ha a year. The World Bank loan will finance the hiring of specialists to help prepare the plan. The World Bank loan is for 15 years including 5 years of grace, with a variable interest rate, currently 10.08 percent, linked to the cost of the Bank's borrowings. It carries a front-end fee of 0.25 percent on the amount of the loan and an annual commitment charge of 0.75 percent on the undisbursed balance. Note: Money figures are expressed in U.S. dollar equivalent.