Countries settle on a proposal for the financial strengthening of IICA

*This year's meeting of the Executive Committee points to the end of a 20-year period during which IICA member countries’ contributions have remained unchanged.*

San Jose, July 21, 2015 (IICA). In a historic decision, the Executive Committee of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) decided to propose that the ministers of agriculture of the Institute’s member countries approve a 6.57% increase in the annual quotas that each nation pays, to enable the organization to strengthen its finances and enhance its support for the agricultural sector of the Americas.

“This year’s meeting of the Executive Committee is historic because it points to the end of a 20-year period during which IICA member countries’ contributions have remained unchanged. The Institute has seen its resources remain at the same level while the challenges facing agriculture have continued to grow,” observed the Director General of the Institute, Víctor M. Villalobos, at the end of the meeting held in San Jose from July 15-16.

The proposal endorsed by the Executive Committee will be submitted to the Inter-American Board of Agriculture (IABA), comprised of the ministers of agriculture of IICA’s 34 member countries. A session of the IABA will be held during the Meeting of Ministers of Agriculture of the Americas 2015, due to take place from October 19-23 on Mexico’s Riviera Maya.

Mexico’s Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food (SAGARPA) and IICA are organizing the meeting, whose theme will be sustainable agricultural productivity and rural inclusion.

SAGARPA and IICA will be presenting a background document to the ministers to guide their discussions on the subject.

The 2015 Executive Committee comprised delegates from the ministries of agriculture of 10 countries: Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Uruguay.

Representatives of the United States, Mexico, Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Honduras also took part.

“It is not an increase, it is a recovery of the loss in the value of our resources that will make it possible for us to continue offering our technical cooperation to support the development of agriculture and rural territories in the Americas with the same efficiency and transparency,” added Víctor M. Villalobos.

During the recent session of the Executive Committee, IICA presented the main results achieved with the implementation of its new cooperation model, set out in the 2014-2018 Medium-term Plan approved by the same committee in May of last year.

The Institute’s results included facilitating the dialogue between Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean on Codex Alimentarius issues, promoting a program for the integrated management of coffee rust in Central America, and providing a space for representatives of the ministries of agriculture and environment of the Americas to develop a common agenda. These and other achievements demonstrated to the Executive Committee the need to continue investing in the hemisphere’s agricultural sector.

“The efforts that our member countries will have to make to increase their contributions to IICA will be rewarded with concrete actions aimed at maintaining agriculture’s contributions, among other things, to food security, rural inclusion and climate change mitigation and adaptation,” the Director General of IICA emphasized..

More information:
evangelina.beltran@iica.int