Rural Damascus - SANA
Participants in the meeting devoted to developing rural development projects recommended setting up a new strategy and plan for developing rural development projects and programs in terms of management and financing, especially rural women business products, to be easily available in the internal and external markets in a way that would contribute to finding a source of income for them and supporting the national economy.
The participants in the meeting discussed the currently implemented programs for rural women and the activities and events that are being implemented within the livestock and tuna projects
Rural water and the reality of product marketing and the controls governing the manufacturing and promotion processes with the aim of opening internal and external marketing outlets.
In order to improve the reality of rural development projects, the participants proposed setting up a national program to institutionalize the rural development process that defines a mechanism and methods for selecting and qualifying the target population, and how to market their products, in addition to forming auxiliary marketing units for the manufacturing units.
The participants recommended the creation of a development finance fund to promote rural projects in partnership with the private sector, and inviting capital to contribute to support this fund.
The Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform, Eng. Muhammad Hassan Qatana, stated in a statement to reporters that development projects need to be reorganized and a law that clarifies and frames the mechanism of their work in addition to the need for an integrated institutional system that controls the production chain starting from providing raw materials, monitoring their quality and analyzing them up to the stage of their manufacture and marketing, confirming that Rural development is an integrated action between the state and the local community, and that partnership between them is the basis for its success.
Qatana stressed the need to cultivate small lands, regardless of their size, by their owners in order to achieve part of their self-sufficiency, pointing out that what is more important than providing productive grants is their continuity, development and transformation from a mere grant to a small or large project.
Before the meeting, the Minister Qatana and the delegation inspected the agricultural protected facilities in the Shaab Valley in Deir Atiyah and looked at their status and the trees planted in them, in addition to seeing the alternative energy solar energy project to feed the water pumping station in the region. A number of fields of the Shami rose in the village of Al-Marah were also inspected and the farmers' demands were heard. And the problems encountered in their production to be addressed.
The governor of Damascus countryside, Eng. Alaa Ibrahim, directors of the Damascus countryside agriculture, departments of rural women development, the livestock project, officials of sales halls of rural women's products and food processing units in the governorates participated in the meeting.
Bushra Barhoum and Ghossoub Abboud
