By Business Reporter
STANDARD Chartered Bank will increase the agriculture portfolio by US$20 million this year to include emerging farmers.
Director corporate and agriculture Hugo Chilufya said the bank’s total lending to the agriculture sector amounted to $200 million.
Mr Chilufya said the bank was targeting to increase access to the agriculture sector by $20 million to include the emerging farmers, bringing the total amount to be loaned out to $220 million.
“We think Zambia will have a good season this year because the rains are fairly good. As a result we intend to increase access of agricultural loans between $15 million and $20 million dollars this year,” he said.
In an interview in Lusaka, Mr Chilufya said the bank supported the whole agriculture chain, starting from the time the seed was on the ground to the time it went to the millers.
Mr Chilufya said finance played an important role to the development of the agriculture sector.
He said the bank had this year set aside between $50 million and $75 million for pure agriculture.
“We have very ambitious plans this year and what we have done is to introduce a new product that will include small holder farmers and we are also working with various people who know farming so that they can help us monitor the farmers and be able to lend more money to the emerging farmers,” he said.
Mr Chilufya said about 75 large-scale farmers benefited from the agricultural loans last year.
He noted that the credit culture among farmers had improved greatly adding that in the last six to seven years, the bank experienced difficulties with loan repayment due to the drought.
“We had to help our farmers come out of the drought by giving them more time to pay their loans so we had to restructure our agriculture facility and at the moment books look good,” Mr Chilufya said.
He was optimistic that this year Zambia would have a good harvest.