Yemen and CFC work to explore deeper impacts
Ambassador Sheikh Mohammed Belal, Managing Director of the Common Fund for Commodities (CFC) visited the Embassy of Yemen, The Hague, to follow up on earlier discussions and also to brief Ambassador Sahar Ghanem, Ambassador of the Republic of Yemen on the activities of the Common Fund for Commodities as well as ways of future cooperation at this challenging time of rising commodity prices and the war in Ukraine. They resolved to remain engaged for deeper impacts in the Land of Sheba and beyond.
During the discussion following an introductory presentation on CFC, Ambassador Belal briefed Ambassador Ghanem on the current discrepancy between CFC’s financing resources and the increase of requests for services received by the CFC through the Call for Proposals process. Ambassador Belal requested Ambassador Ghanem to help CFC with their success stories and thereby help CFC to improve the format and character of CFC projects.
As a follow up to earlier discussions on CFC’s effort to use its investments in Yemen as an antidote to hopeless in the conflicted areas, Ambassador Belal sought help from Ambassador Yemen so that CFC could source impactful ideas for investments from Yemen. Referring to Ambassador Belal’s visit to the Saudi Development and Reconstruction Program for Yemen (SDRPY) in Riyadh recently, Ambassador Ghanem expressed hope that more could be done together in Yemen in the not too distant future for investments in areas like specialty coffee, honey, almond, fish etc. from Yemen.
Ambassador Belal also shared information on the ongoing initiative on the formulation of a fund entitled Agricultural Commodity Transformation (ACT) Fund (formerly referred to as ‘CIIF’) designed to enable CFC to contribute more towards the alleviation of poverty. Once the ACT Fund is formed, member countries and private entities are welcome to join this impact investment fund as investors.
Ambassador Ghanem expressed her gratitude towards the CFC for taking the initiative of launching this ACT Fund and assured to support both the process and construct through necessary coordination with all member states. Ambassador Ghanem shall also try to connect CFC with some potential partners so that CFC could also work out a dedicated programme for Yemen.
On her part, H.E. Ms. Sahar Ghanem assured that she will also explore examples of success stories in Yemen so that CFC could implement similar, if not more, impactful pilots in the future. Ambassador Ghanem expressed her appreciation for the good work of CFC and hoped that further collaboration could be explored in the future.
Ambassador Belal assured to pursue more innovative outreaches in the days to come to make the services of CFC available to as many people as possible in the commodity dependent developing world, with a heightened sense of innovations and creativity.