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Farmers and their money still parted
As localities are still having difficulties implementing the programme on providing preferential loans, farmers still cannot get money to purchase agricultural machines.
Lacking information
Having sold paddies, Nguyen Tan Dat in Hon Dat district in Kien Giang province has decided to purchase a reaper. However, Dat cannot purchase the machine, though he has found a good one, because the money from the paddy sales is not enough.
“Why don’t you get money from the interest rate subsidy programme?” – “Interest rate programme? I have not heard about it,” Dat said.
A lot of farmers in the same commune say that they have heard about the programme in the newspaper and on the radio. However, they do not know what procedures they have to follow to get loans.
“We have asked local authorities, but the local authorities told us to go ask banks. Meanwhile, we cannot get any information from banks, because there is no guide or consultant here,” said Tran Thi Hong, a farmer in Chau Thanh district in An Giang province.
During a meeting of the Dong Thap province People’s Committee in late May 2009, it was reported that 80 percent of farmers do not know what formalities they have to fulfill to get loans.
Not easy to access loans
Meanwhile, in localities where banks are ready to disburse money, farmers still have not come to ask for loans. Local agricultural machinery shops also confirm that they have not had any clients purchase machines with preferential loans.
In Kien Giang province, according to Nguyen Van Hoan, head of the Credit Division under Agribank, in the month of the programme’s implementation, only 17 households have taken out 2.9 billion dong in loans.
Meanwhile, Nguyen Ngoc Rang, director of Agribank Dong Thap, said that no farmer in the province has got loans under the interest rate subsidy programme. The same situation has been reported by An Giang Agribank.
Explaining this, an official from the Kien Luong Department of Agriculture and Rural Development said that farmers are not fond of completing formalities to get loans; moreover, most of their assets have been mortgaged for loans already, so banks cannot provide them with additional loans.
Meanwhile, according to Nguyen Van Thanh, Director of the An Giang Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, loans are stuck because of lack of guiding documents.
For example, there is a stipulation that farmers have to use the loans to purchase domestically-made machines. However, there is no legal document that clearly defines “domestically-made products”. Most products are made in Vietnam, but many of the parts are imported from other countries. Is it still a domestically-made product if it is assembled in Vietnam but the parts are imported? What percent of locally-made is necessary for a product to be called “domestically-made”?
Doan Ngoc Pha, deputy director of the An Giang Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, said that the local authorities have asked the Ministry of Industry and Trade to clear up these issues so that money can get to farmers.
VietNamNet, TT
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