IDB has approved a US$12.5mn grant to protect and improve irrigation and drainage infrastructure in Haiti's main rice-growing region, the Artibonite valley, the bank announced.

Works will include repairing broken embankments, restoring drainage capacity and improving floodway capacity. A 23km stretch of the Artibonite canal will be expanded to irrigate a 5,000ha area, and minor irrigation and drainage systems will be repaired or built.

With a US$41.9mn IDB soft loan, Haiti kicked off an irrigation program in 2004 to increase family incomes in the Artibonite valley, which was devastated by floods caused by Hurricane Georges in 1998.

The current grant is to protect and expand those gains, "particularly in the face of increasingly harsh water flows," the bank said.

The program's current demonstration plots have increased yields dramatically to as much as 6t/ha for rice, compared with the valley average of 1.5t/ha, and 40t/ha of onion yields versus the average 4t/ha.