Productive Safety Net Program to Benefit over 8 Mln Clients in 5 Years: Ministry

March 29/2021(ENA) The 5th phase Rural Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) launched today will benefit more than 8 million client people in Ethiopia in the coming 5 years, Ministry of Agriculture disclosed.

At the launching ceremony of the program, Agriculture Minister, Omer Hussien said PSNP has reduced poverty, increased productivity, supported livelihood and ensured food security, especially in rural areas over the past 15 years.

The minister stressed the need to solve previous challenges and effectively implement the fifth phase to properly benefit the clients.

Challenges include meeting timeliness of transfer standards, public work and livelihood linkage, loan able fund.

Ministry’s Food Security Coordination Directorate Director, Sintayehu Demissie on her part said the program aims to reduce extreme poverty and enhance resilience to shocks of extremely poor and vulnerable rural households in 408 PSNP districts.

This phase is expected to modernize key system infrastructures that will aid smooth program implementation, create better linkages between public work and livelihood, improve provisions on gender and social risks management among others, she pointed out.  

The overall budget allocated for the fifth phase PSNP is 2.38 billion USD, of which 65 percent of the funding is to be covered by development partners and 25 percent by the government, it was learned. However, 10 percent of the funding is expected to be covered by other partners.

Out of the over 8 million clients expected to receive core transfers, 51 percent are women, it was indicated.

During the fifth phase PSNP, 2 million hectares of land will be treated to mainly protect land degradation.

The government adapted emergency food aid system in 2005 and launched PSNP.