August 21 (SeeNews) - The World Bank said it is providing a 64.6 million euro ($70.3 million) loan to support Albania's climate resilience and agricultural development through investments that promote climate smart agriculture, market access, food safety, and evidence-based analysis capacity of the governance.
Of the total, an estimated 26.8 million euro will finance the modernisation of selected irrigation and drainage schemes throughout the country, involving the upgrade from open channel-irrigation to pressured irrigation and the installation of photovoltaic arrays to decrease irrigation costs, a project document shared by the World Bank with SeeNews on Friday shows.
Activities to enhance compliance with food safety and quality standards, involving improvement of inspection capacities and diagnostic support in the areas of food safety, veterinary and plant health analyses, as well as development of storage capacity, are anticipated to require a funding of 20.3 million euro.
An estimated 13.82 million euro is set to finance the development of short distribution chains, promotion of local products and the set up of a climate-smart agriculture IT platform.
As many as 3.68 million euro is the estimated financing that will be provided with the aim to establish a sustainable and effective monitoring and evaluation system for agricultural and rural development policy in Albania.
The financing is expected to be disbursed over a six-year period starting in 2024 and ending in 2029.
($ = 0.9186 euro)