Agriculture and Rural Development Ministry’s 2013 draft budget stands at FCFA 95.52 billion.

The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Essimi Menye on December 1, 2012 night defended the ministry’s draft budgetary allocation for the 2013 financial year that stands at FCFA 95.52 billion. FCFA 78.020 billion of the budget constitutes domestic resources and FCFA 17.5 billion as external resources.

The ministry, following the Minister’s introductory note, has distributed domestic resources into recurrent budget that stands at FCFA 40.391 billion against FCFA 38.432 billion for 2012 and FCFA 37.629 billion as investment budget compared to FCFA 28.431 billion in 2012. What remains attractive are the four major programmes the ministry intends to carry out with the budget. They include the agricultural value chains productivity and competitiveness improvement programme; rural infrastructure and agricultural production modernization programme; agriculture specific natural resources sustainable management programme and institutional development and capacity building programme.

Mr Essimi Menye in the introductory note states the ministry’s ambitious production objectives for 2013 that targets a substantial increase in export crops and those destined for local consumption. It intends to increase cocoa production from the expected 250, 000 tons in 2012 to 292,000 tons in 2013, robusta coffee from 50,000 tons to 60,000 tons, Arabic coffee from 11,000 to 13,000 tons, cotton from 230,000 to 250,000 tons, maize from 1,810,300 to 2.048,500 tons.