BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 18
By Nargiz Sadikhova - Trend:
Kazakhstan’s farmers started receiving soft loans to fund sowing work in the country, Trend reports with reference to the press office of Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Agriculture.
The ministry said that the funds allocated for soft loans provision amounted to 100 billion tenge ($238 million). The loans are allocated for a period of up to 12 months under 6 percent annual rate. The main debt can be repaid only at the end of the loan term.
The financing is provided through Agrarian Credit Corporation JSC (FCC) and second-tier banks. Ever since the sowing campaign has begun, ACC has optimized and automated business processes in order to speed up and simplify the issuance of funds.
In particular, the review and issuance period was decreased from 30 calendar days to 10 days. The list of documents required by the borrower also was reduced. To date, the ACC has issued nearly six billion tenge ($14.2 million) to farmers.
The ministry noted that recently the ACC completed spring field work financing under the ‘Kedala’ program. The ACC allocated 70 billion tenge ($166.6 million) at 5 percent per annum to 2,405 farmers, mainly representatives of small and medium-sized business.
Thus, overall some 170 billion tenge $404.6 million) were allocated to fund the spring field work under the 'Kedala' and 'Economics of Simple Things' programs. The ministry said that this state support will allow the farmers to sow on time and without disruption.
As reported earlier this month, sowing area of highly profitable crops such as oilseeds, vegetables and fodder crops has been increased by 238,000 ha this year in Kazakhstan.
The overall sowing area of agriculture crops was increased to be 22.5 million ha in Kazakhstan in 2020.
The regional budgets allocated 11.3 billion tenge (425.9 million) to subsidize seed production development this year, whereas 2.5 billion tenge ($5.7 million) were allocated from the republican budget to purchase nearly 29,400 tons of seeds and 838,700 elite seedlings.
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