Brasília, June 23, 2003 (Agência Brasil - ABr) - The government will announce the allocation to female rural workers of part of the credit line of the National Program to Finance Family Farming (Pronaf C). The announcement will be made when the Harvest Plan is launched on Tuesday (24). The creation of a specific credit line for female rural workers is a demand of the National Coordination of Female Rural Workers (ANMTR), which met in Brasília this weekend.

According to Rosângela Piovizani, one of the coordinators of the ANMTR, the proposal had already been presented to the Minister of Finance, Antônio Palocci, last December, soon after the elections, when he coordinated the transition government. "Given the impossibility of creating a credit line for women at this moment, the government chose to allocate them part of an already existing line," Piovizani said, explaining that this is a temporary measure and that the government intends to create this specific line for women, in the future.

22 female rural workers from 18 states participated in the meeting, where they also discussed social security reform and the creation of the National Program to Plant and Process non-Transgenic Seeds. (DAS)