The Department of Agriculture (DA), through the Agricultural Credit Policy Council (ACPC); and the Land Bank of the Philippines (LandBank), released P91.98M as new loans for smallholder farmers to boost their competitiveness in rice production.
The newly-released credit assistance forms part of the P2.5-billion Expanded Survival and Recovery Assistance Program for Rice Farmers (SURE Aid), which DA and LandBank launched in August this year.
As of October 17, the total cash loans already reached P206.92M and benefitted 13,643 farmers.
“Since the birth of the SURE Aid Program, all we have in mind is to increase the farmers’ income by giving them the right tool to make their production sustainable in the process,” said Agriculture Secretary William Dar.
The latest round of loan releases reached 6,132 rice farmers who are based in Central Luzon, Southern Tagalog, Bicol, Western Visayas, Northern Mindanao, and Davao regions. Initially, around 1,000 farmer-beneficiaries from Zaragoza, Nueva Ecija availed of the credit program.
Another batch of loan applications from 32,520 farmers totaling P1.14B is being processed and expecting release within the next few weeks.
DA-ACPC is encoding 43,166 in new applications and will soon be transmitted to LandBank.
Under the SURE Aid program, a one-time no-collateral, zero-interest loan amounting to P15,000 will be provided for each farmer tilling less than one hectare to continue or improve rice production. The loan is payable in eight years.
“The most important aspect of our mission at the Department is to build a food-secure nation and a stable and prosperous rural economy,” Dar said.
To make the loan application process easier for farmers, LandBank cut the application process to three hours from the usual 10 days and reduced the number of required documents. Instead of the usually tedious process of filling up forms for loan application, sworn statement, and data privacy consent, the farmer only needs to tick the appropriate boxes on the forms. The bank also trimmed down the 14-page promissory note to just one page.
Dar said this was done to encourage farmers to apply for loans from formal credit providers as a way to boost investments in the farming sector.
The DA-ACPC allotted a total of P2.5B for the SURE Aid Program to be managed by LandBank over a period of four months from August 2019. An estimated 170,000 rice farmers in the country are seen to benefit from this loan project.
“I have mobilized our staff to help the DA regional offices cascade the assistance on the ground. We hope to rightfully exhaust the fund as targeted to provide farmers with the much-needed resources,” said DA-ACPC Executive Director Jocelyn Alma Badiola.
