Four Micro Finance Institutions (MFI's) will sign July 29 a grant agreement to receive funds from the Millennium Challenge Account - Cape Verde (MCA-CV). The signing ceremony will take place at 15:00, in the conference room of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) resident country mission and will be attended by the Ambassador of the United States of America, Marianne Myles.

This assistance is included in the MCA-CV Watershed Project that released in 2008, through Caixa Económica de Cabo Verde, a US$ 600,000 credit line to fund the installation of drip irrigation systems and agri-business related activities in the watersheds of Paul in Santo Antao, Fajã in Sao Nicolau and Mosteiros in Fogo.

In addition to this credit line and throughout this period a group of eight IMF's received capacity building training to improve their performance in granting and monitoring loans for agriculture sector. The agreement signed at that time provided for successive evaluations of those IMFs´ performance in terms of their loan portfolio and future sustainability. After the technical assistance provided by PlaNet Finance Brazil and four IMF's demonstrated good performance (Sol Di Fogo, Morabi, OMCV and ASDIS), MCC and MCA-CV decided to support these organizations enabling them to continue their activities in this sector.