Visiting Tonga recently Mr Thomas Elhaut, the Director of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) spoke about the challenges that Tonga's rural communities face.

He believed that agricultural development in rural areas can help boost Tonga's economic growth and it will also provide a social safety net for the community but it is necessary to look at agriculture as a business and to modernize agriculture to make it more competitive, more diverse and more attractive to youth.

"The challenge that IFAD has is that hardship is concentrated to a large extent in women and rural areas and therefore it disadvantages the young people who live there," he said. "We need to relieve the pressure on women and free them to do other things."

Eradicating poverty

IFAD is a specialized lending agency of the United Nations and an international financial institution dedicated to eradicating poverty in the rural areas of developing countries where the majority of the world's poorest live.

Suporting the MORDI programme in Tonga it has looked at the needs of the vulnerable groups such as rural youth and women living in 22 isolated and remote outer island communities in Ha'apai, Vava'u outer islands and the Niuas.

"I believe one of the biggest contributors is to look at small initiatives, for example to farmers, fishermen and women's endeavours in the outer islands."

MORDI provides resources to help develop community development plans and to assist in entrepreneurial development.

Mr Elhaut said the IFAD insists that programmes are those of the people in the communities and the government of Tonga "that we support with financial resources and hopefully with knowledge. Projects are run by your own nationals and when there is more demand from the community more resources go to rural areas.

"We are realising that if we want to be serious about empowering people to become rich we have to work with partners and have a presence and a dialogue in the Pacific so that we can do better and do more. We want to build the capacity of people in rural communities to express what they need and by enabling people to reduce the hardships by working where they live.

"Agriculture is still an important driver of growth," he said.

Mr Elhaut sadi that often because inadequate attention is paid to monitoring and evaluating of agricultural development. "So you can tell your Finance Minister what investment has achieved in the rural sector. We need to know better what happens to rural areas and particularly rural women in the context of productive capacity."

Mr Elhaut said Tonga falls into a group of the three poorest countries in the region that qualify for access to loans at special rates of 0.75 per cent with repayment periods of 40 years for development of rural areas.

The IFAD makes available USD$330 million for Pacific lending programmes, which helps governments put in infrastructure such as roads and water supplies to assist development of rural markets.

Mr Elhaut who was in Tonga on May 20 met with the local MORDI organisers located at the Catholic Women's League building at Ma'ufanga.

IFAD has established a Pacific Islands office in Suva, Fiji, where Siale Bain-Vete is the sub-regional coordinator for the Pacific Islands countries.