Announcement of One Million Eight Hundred Thousand Dollar Credit to Burundi on April 9, 1969

• INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION 1818 H STREET, N.W., WASHINGTON 0. C. 20433 TELEPHONE: EXECUTIVE 3-6360 IDA Press Release No. 69/13 Subject: $1.8 million credit to Burundi April 9, 1969 A $2.2 million scheme to improve the yields and quality of coffee crops, the mainstay of the economy of Burundi, will get support from a $1.8 million credit from the International Development Association (IDA), it was announced today~ The project will increase the very low cash incomes of 44,000 farmers by at least 40% annually and will reduce the deficit in Burundi's balance of payments. Burundi, a small land-locked country in central equatorial Africa, has • a population of 4.1 million of whom fewer than 31. live in towns or villages • Subsistence farming is the main occupation. Coffee, mostly of the Arabica type and produced by about 300,000 smallholders, is the principal cash crop. It provides up to 20;. of the gross domestic prt,duct and 801. of export earnings. Export duties on coffee account for 12% of the Government's tax revenues. From a 1959 high of 22,000 tons, Burundi coffee production has slumped in recent years to an annual average of about 16,000 tons. Quality has also gone down. The project now being financed is cllesign.ed to reverse this trend, not by new plantings, but by bringing about more efficient production in an area of 11,000 acres with 7 million coffee treE!S in Ngozi Province, the heart of Burundi's coffee-growing region. The Burundi Agency for Industrial Crops (OCIBU), a government agency, will carry out the proje,ct over the next five years. It will include in-service training for Burundian coffee extension and • /more I  IDA P.R. No. 69/13 - Burundi-Coffee - 2 - processing personnel; a program of fertilizer trials and sales; the provision • of farm inputs and tools to participating farmers; the construction of four pulping and fermenting factories, and the improvement of about 80 commercial pulping centers as well as of 350 small bridges on existing coffee tracks. At full production by 1980, the project is expected to add 1,600 tons annually to present coffee output, some of this additional production being of superior quality. A specialist from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) helped to identify the project under the Bank/FAO Cooperative Program. The IDA credit of $1.8 million will be extended to the Govermnent of Burundi for a term of 50 years, including a 10-year grace period. cover IDA's administrative costs. It will be free of interest, but a service charge of 3/4 of 11. will be made to • - 0 - \ •