Turkey And Usaid Sign Agreement

ANKARA - An agreement on a 9 million U.S. dollars of grant given by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to Turkey was signed on Monday.
Turkish Treasury Undersecretary Ibrahim Canakci, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Eric Edelman and World Bank Turkey Director Andrew Vorkink signed the agreement.
Speaking at the signing ceremony, Canakci said that the USAID had made the grant to support the project envisaging to mitigate social risk in Turkey.
''The social risk mitigation program was initiated in 2003. Since then, a total of 1,195,000 women and children have benefited from it. Under the program, we have provided poor families with a financial aid of 73 million U.S. dollars. The program is expected to be finalized in 2006. We target to reach 1,300,000 people with the program,'' he said.
Canakci said that the grant of the USAID would be used in the Conditional Cash Transfer, the first stage of the project envisaging to decrease social risk in Turkey.
''The project aims to decrease poverty by providing poor families with basic health and education services. The total financing of is 635 million U.S. dollars,'' Canakci added.