Ministry of Agriculture representatives visit India in framework of Azerbaijan Rural Investment Project

Baku. 23 June. REPORT.AZ/ Ministry of Agriculture representatives have visited India in the framework of Azerbaijan Rural Investment Project.

Report was informed in the Embassy of India, the embassy recently hosted a meeting of Ambassador Sanjay Rana with the five representatives of the Azerbaijan Rural Investment Project (AzRIP) of the Ministry of Agriculture who had visited India recently and the World Bank officials. The AzRIP team had visited India on a study tour during April-May 2017 arranged by the World Bank on the theme of livelihood development and infrastructure development. It was informed that the Azerbaijani team visited several projects across India and interacted with the hosting communities in the states of Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Telangana, Panjab and Himachal Pradesh.

The team leader from AzRIP, Gulbaniz Gambarova informed that their team had visited Amul, which was the largest dairy cooperative in India, owned by 3.6 million milk producers and the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB). They also met the milk producers, operators, and buyers at Uttarasanda village level cooperative, which is a 63-year village cooperative and runs highly automated operations with electronic testing equipment and cashless transactions.

During their trip, the group interacted with several Self-Help Groups (SHG), namely, Kudumbashree and Jalnidhi in Kerala, SERP in Andhra Pradesh, PMGSY in Himachal Pradesh and realized that SHGs can be a platform to improve rural livelihoods and as a source of security. The Azerbaijani team was impressed in particular with women’s banks which provide an improved access to finance, insurance, pension and other services, and knowledge on financial literacy to a large number of women.

AzRIP delegation informed that they got acquainted with community projects for sustainable management of water by developing the capacity of water beneficiary groups.They also visited Gujarat to see the use of nano-technology developed by Indian specialists to build the intra and inter village roads. During their visit to Punjab, they saw that waste plastic material was being recycled and reused to reduce amount of bitumen used in road making. AzRIP team expressed their interest in bringing these technologies to Azerbaijan and pilot them. Azerbaijani team emphasized that their study tour to India was productive and would contribute to the development of cooperation in agriculture.

Ambassador Rana emphasized that India was committed to develop a strong, vibrant and mutually beneficial partnership with Azerbaijan in all fields and have growing bilateral trade and cooperation. He expressed India’s keen interest to enhance cooperation with Azerbaijan in the field of Agriculture and expressed his happiness with the positive results of the visit of the AzRIP team. He offered to support visit of Indian agricultural experts to Azerbaijan and participation of Azerbaijani professionals through fully funded training courses in India under the Indian Technical Economic Cooperation (ITEC). It was informed that in recent years more than 120 government officials and professionals experts have participated in various technical courses at top-class institutions in India under the ITEC Programme