Baku, December 10, AZERTAC Azerbaijan has officially joined one of the projects implemented under the FAO-Turkey Partnership Programme on Food and Agriculture (FTPP II) titled Capacity Development for Sustainable Fisheries and Aquaculture Management in Central Asia, Azerbaijan and Turkey (FISHCap), FAO representative office in Azerbaijan told AZERTAC.Head of FAO Partnership and Liaison Office in the Republic of Azerbaijan Melek Çakmak and Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan Mukhtar Babayev signed the project agreement on behalf of FAO and the Government of Azerbaijan, respectively. Funded by the Government of Turkey, FISHCap project aims to increase capacities for the sustainable exploitation, management, and protection of natural resources through the sustainable development of fisheries and aquaculture in Central Asia, Azerbaijan and Turkey with a budget of USD 1 million through 2022. In addition to Azerbaijan, other recipient countries of the FISHCap are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. FISHCap is assisting the partner governments to mainstream management of water resources into rural economic development, food safety, job generation and poverty reduction by strengthening institutional capacity building and by providing technical assistance for sustainable development of the national aquaculture resources.Azerbaijan was also covered by the first phase of FTPP, which ran between 2009 and 2015 in 16 countries.