Minister of Agriculture and Land Reclamation Essam Fayed said the World Bank mission, currently visiting here, agreed to extend Egypt’s Farm-level Irrigation Modernization Project (FIMP) for another year ending June 2017.

In statements on Sunday, Fayed said an agreement has been reached with the World Bank mission to sign a cooperation protocol with the Ministry of Agriculture represented by the National Land Improvement Authority and the military factories to accelerate the implementation of FIMP projects.

Fayed praised the role of WB in carrying out development projects in Egypt, voicing the ministry's full readiness to remove any impediments facing the WB projects in Egypt especially in the field of rural development.

The project development objective is to increase agricultural profitability and improve equity in access to higher-quality water for up to 140,000 small-scale farmers on up to 200,000 feddans (80,000 hectares) in the command areas of Mahmoudia, Manaifa and Meet Yazid located in the Nile Delta. This would be conducted specifically in areas where upstream irrigation improvement interventions, both physical and institutional, have occurred and are fully functional. These objectives would be achieved through both structural improvements and a strengthening of farmer support services.

The FIMP project is estimated at dlrs 100 million and would cover up to 200,000 feddans in Beheira and Kafr el Sheikh through cooperation between the Egyptian government, the French Development Agency (AFD) and The German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ).