The Department of Agriculture will pilot-test its easy access loan program called Production Loan Easy Access (PLEA) in two towns in the country, one a poor fishing town in Surigao del Norte and the other a progressive farming municipality in Nueva Ecija, following a commitment by President Rodrigo Duterte to provide funding for the full development of the country’s agriculture sector.

Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol said the easy access loans, which could reach as high as P50,000 per farmer, will be implemented first in Malimono, Surigao del Norte, a town with a poverty incidence of 90 percent and confronted with problems of insurgency because of the presence of the New People’s Army (NPA), and in Bongabon, Nueva Ecija, the acknowledged onion farming capital of the country.

“The two towns have been chosen as the first two laboratories of an innovative lending program aimed at increasing the productivity of farmers and fishermen and lifting them out of poverty,” Piñol said.

The program will be implemented by the Agriculture Credit Policy Council (ACPC), an agency which handles the lending program of the DA all over the country.

ACPC Executive Director Jocelyn Badiola and her staff have already visited Malimono and Bongabon for the implementation of the program, Piñol said.

He said the ACPC will allocate P15 million for Malimono and P20 million for the farmers in Bongabon. In Malimono, a poor town with rich fishing grounds, the initial P15 million will be downloaded to a local credit cooperative, which will be lent at an interest rate of 6 percent per annum.

Every farmer and fishermen who will avail of the loan will be automatically covered by crop insurance under the Philippine Crop Insurance Corporation (PCIC) and the premium will be deducted from his loan proceeds, he said.

Piñol said that before the implementation of the lending program, farmers and fishermen will be properly identified and their areas properly marked through geo-tagging. After the verification, all information will be inputted in a computer data base and issued identification cards complete with their biometrics and passbooks.

The amount of loan to be granted will depend on the activity and commodity that the farmers will be involved in with a maximum loan amount of P50,000, the DA Secretary said.

At an interest rate of 6 percent per year or .5 percent per month, the maturity of the loan will depend on the commodity and activity that the borrowing farmer will be involved in, Piñol said.

“For rice and corn, I have recommended a two year loan maturity, five years for high value crops like cacao and coffee and a maximum of 10 years for long gestating crops like coconut, mango and others,” the DA Secretary said. (DA-OSEC)

Reference:

NORMAN WILLIAM S. KRAFT
Director, Information Systems & Management Division (ISMD) and
Monitoring & Evaluation Division (M&E), ACPC
Contact Nos.: 02-6343320

EMMALYN J. GUINTO
Chief, Information Systems & Management Division, ACPC
Contact No. 02-6343320