Since 1980, IFAD has extended loans to the Republic of Indonesia for 13 programmes and projects totalling US$333.5 million. Ten of the programmes and projects have been completed and three are ongoing.

IFAD supports the government in its efforts to achieve medium-term and long-term objectives of poverty reduction. IFAD assistance to Indonesia will continue to focus on developing smallholder agriculture. It will work to enhance the competitiveness of smallholders and producers, boosting the growth of the rural economy, and to address the key causes of rural poverty at the local level, taking into account opportunities for partnerships and synergies. The aims of IFAD operations in Indonesia are to empower poor rural women and men living in poor areas in order to enhance their food security, increase their incomes and reduce poverty.

IFAD’s strategy
In December 2008 IFAD approved the organization’s new Country Strategic Opportunities Programme (COSOP) for the period 2009–2013. The COSOP outlines the organization’s strategic objectives:

• to increase the access of rural poor people to productive assets, appropriate technology and support services, to boost on-farm and off-farm productivity
• to enhance the access of poor rural people to infrastructure, to markets for inputs and outputs, and to financial services
• to build the capacity of poor rural people to engage in local policy and programming processes

IFAD focuses on areas where there is a high incidence of poverty, where there are large numbers of poor rural households, and where they are opportunities to improve agricultural productivity and develop strategic partnerships. It establishes operations in places where there are no major, ongoing, externally financed develpment programmes. 
Programmes and projects funded by IFAD work to help:

• poor rural households that have limited access to land and are without other productive assets or opportunities for off-farm employment
• ethnic minority communities and other marginalized groups

Investment projects under the new country programme will focus on poor people, those who are food insecure and ethnic cminority communities living in rainfed, upland and coastal areas and other marginalized areas in eastern Indonesia that are characterized by a high incidence of rural poverty.

In December 2008 IFAD approved a loan and grant for the National Programme of Community Empowerment in Rural Areas Project to provide targeted support for agricultural development in Papua and West Papua, which have largely indigenous and ethnic populations and the highest incidence of poverty in the country.

The ongoing Post-Crisis Programme for Participatory Integrated Development in Rainfed Areas was designed to build poor rural people's institutions, particularly in the form of self-help groups that work closely with other community-based organizations to manage local resources. The aim of the programme is to reach people living in some of the poorest villages in Indonesia. In implementing the programme, IFAD works through strong partnerships with NGOs.

Similarly, the Income-Generating Project for Marginal Farmers and the Landless (P4K) – Phase III, now closed, helped poor rural people help themselves by learning the skills they need to improve their livelihoods and the well-being of their families. A principal feature of the project was mobilizing savings and improving access to credit, which are fundamental in enabling poor rural people to overcome poverty.

Country strategic opportunities programme (2008)

Source: IFAD