By Kingsley Jassi:
President Lazarus Chakwera has challenged authorised dealer banks to be a key part of the country’s agricultural transformation.
He said they can do so by increasing the rate of financing from the current 8 percent of their injection into the economy to a substantial rate.
“Currently, banks support about 8 percent [of activities] in agriculture and that is not good enough. We want commercial banks, development banks, that will help invest in that which will make us a self-reliant nation. It cannot happen by itself, it has to be intentional,” the President said at his Lombwa farm in Mchinji District on Saturday, when he disclosed that it was financed with a bank loan.
Chakwera said there was a need to increase agricultural productivity and be-self reliant on food.
He rued the current state, when the country imports maize to meet its domestic needs.
“Government will have policies that [the] private sector subscribes to and we, together, [can] find the financing. Those who want to grow food crops or cash crops should be able to access the financing needed to be able to do that,” Chakwera said.
He acknowledged that despite weather-related causes to the current food insecurity and economic situation, there was low productivity, a problem he said needed to be addressed.
Chakwera further called on those with resources, as well as players in the financial sector, to embrace that idea of boosting production.
The President also said there was a need for stakeholders to embrace value addition.
NBS Bank Chief Executive Officer Kwanele Ngwenya, who accompanied the President to the farm, admitted that there was low financing in agriculture.
He was quick to point out limiting factors that include over-dependence on rainfed agriculture and dishonest farmers, saying this did not give the required level of confidence.
“[For] we, as banks, the biggest issue is that we want to get the right farmers, those who are honest and are ready to do the right things.
“Banks are always ready to come up with the right solutions that suit any type of farming, whether its primary or secondary production,” Ngwenya said.
He further said there was some presence of banks in the primary production sector but admitted that more work needed to be done in financing mechanisation and value addition to support the development of value chains that sustain agricultural productivity.
He assured farmers that the bank was ready to support credit-worth farmers with viable ventures, pointing out that NBS Bank was heavily involved in the current mega farms initiative.
NBS Bank was involved in the setting up of Lombwa farm in Mchinji, a 1,000-hectare estate that has 350 hectares under rain-fed production this season and is going into irrigation this year, with an initial scale of 110 hectares.
Ministry of Agriculture official Alfred Mwenefumbo said, with this year’s K52 billion mega farms investment, the country was expected to harvest over 200 000 metric tonnes of maize through the 722 mega farmers that have been supported.
‘We have supported about 722 mega farmers with combined farm size of close to 40, 000 hectares across the country. With the K52 billion investment, their yield could sell for over K190 billion,” Mwenefumbo, who recently moved from the Mega Farm Unit to the Ministry of Agriculture, said.
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