Cocoa partnership agreements signed in East New Britian

The PNG Agriculture Commercialisation and Diversification (PACD) project cocoa component has signed partnership agreements with partners in East New Britain, says project manager Roland Kerina.
Kerina said the partners were selected through a project evaluation process under the World Bank guidelines in the past 12 months.
Of the 61 expressions of interest, only 26 went through to the detailed project proposal phase, where 22 passed to be assessed by the projects technical appraisal committee chaired by economist Paul Barker.
The final list was recommended to the Cocoa Industry coordination committee.
There will be 14 projects in other provinces, including the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, New Ireland, West New Britain, Morobe and Madang. The two lead partners that signed the agreement were ENB Women and Youth in Agriculture Corporative Society Association Limited and the Kairak Centre for Sustainable Rural Development.
They signed partnership agreements of which 18 projects proposals were approved by the coordination committee in January this year.
PACD project productive partnership coordinator Marin Powell said small livestock, coconut downstream processing and cocoa rehabilitation were the major activities in the partnerships.
He urged the partners to fast-track the setting up of their project bank accounts where payments would be deposited.