LiftFund

The multi-donor Livelihoods and Food Security Fund (LIFT) has been operating in Myanmar since 2009. LIFT support, amounting to USD 509 million, has reached around 11.6 million rural people, roughly 33 per cent of the country’s rural population.

Nutrition activities in the Delta, Dry Zone, Rakhine and Uplands have achieved good results. The Financial Inclusion Programme reaches 2.6 million people with microfinance financial services.

In 2018, mechanisation, microfinance and migration had a significant impact on the rural population in Myanmar across the four geographic areas where LIFT works. LIFT’s migration programme is the largest funding window for migration in Myanmar. Migration from rural areas continues to increase as jobs in urban areas attract rural people looking to ‘step out’ of agriculture.

By the end of 2018, LIFT’s Agribusiness Finance Programme had delivered financing for agricultural equipment valued at USD 138 million that was purchased by rural entrepreneurs who are building businesses in machinery rental services. By the end of 2018, LIFT was funding 26 financial institutions active in 247 townships and client growth increased by 23 per cent.

In the 2019-2023 phase, LIFT continues to work on nutrition, resilience, gender and social protection initiatives that support rural people in Myanmar’s economic transformation. LIFT also intensifies its focus on inclusion and working for inclusive and transformative change. LIFT focuses further on inclusion and social cohesion, intensifies its focus on gender and women’s empowerment, border states and conflict-affected areas, bringing internally displaced persons and returnees into its development programmes, seeking to programme in underserved urban and peri-urban areas, and supporting adoption and implementation of policy reforms.