A signing ceremony with fifteen community forestry forest products producers associations (CFPPAs) at village and township level to sign new partnership letters of agreement (LoAs) took place on Friday 10 March, 2017 at the FAO office in Yangón, Myanmar. 

Ms. Xiaojie, FAO Representative in Myanmar, U Bo Ni, focal point for Forest and Farm Facility (FFF) in the Forestry Department, Dr. Kyaw Tint, chairman of MERN participated in the opening session of the event. During the ceremony, the FAOR highlighted the importance for FAO of working together with the government and communities at national and local level to improve the livelihoods of the people of Myanmar. FFF, working together with the government and NGOs members of MERN, supports the establishment and strengthening of smallholder producer organisations and businesses at village, township and sub-state level.

Forest and Farm Facility (FFF), hosted by FAO HQs in Rome, started activities in Myanmar in 2013 in close collaboration with the Forestry Department of Myanmar and the facilitation of Myanmar Environment Rehabilitation-Conservation Network (MERN) aiming to support producers to get organized for business purposes and to participate in policy discussions. In the past few years, remarkable achievements have been made through joint efforts in Myanmar.  Following work in 2014 to help 6 NGOs support the establishment and strengthening of smallholder producer organisations and businesses, in 2015 the ambition was to build on that foundation by catalysing township and State level associations of community forest user groups, built around business interests – and support a revision of the CFI to grant those community groups full commercial rights. In 2016, the Southern Rakhine Community Forest Products Producers Association (CFPPA) was finally formed and FFF support to the Community Forest National Working Group (CFNWG) started in January the same year.

The 15 CFPPAs were selected as result of an open call for proposals for organizing forest and farm producer groups for business. The CFPPAs will receive funds from FAO – FFF that will enable them to strengthen their internal capacities on governance and financial management, help establish a revolving fund, and work towards value addition of their forest and farm products such as bamboo, coffee, tea, etc.