As-Suwayda - SANA
During the past year, the Cooperative Agricultural Bank and its branches in Suwayda granted development loans to farmers at a value of 7 billion and 895 million pounds, an increase of about 2 billion pounds over the previous year.
The Director of the Cooperative Agricultural Bank in As-Suwayda, Eng. Nassim Hudayfah, stated in a statement to SANA that the increase in the rate of lending reflects the confidence of dealers in the bank and the importance of its role in financing the agricultural production process. For the entirety of last year through the bank and its branches in the governorate, it reached one billion and 691 million pounds, while the value of deposits at the end of last year amounted to 17 billion pounds.
A number of farmers talked about the necessity of increasing the value of the loans granted to match the high prices of the requirements and costs of agricultural work, both plant and animal, and reducing their benefits and facilitating grant procedures, in addition to excluding agricultural transactions from fees and stamps as part of a support process for farmers.
And the farmer, Atef Al-Ashqar, stated that he obtained a loan of 1.8 million pounds for a period of five years, to buy “Azaka”, which is equivalent to 60 percent of its value, after paying 40 percent of it through the Agricultural Bank, pointing to the importance of the process of financing the purchase of agricultural work requirements for farmers. , which was reflected in the reduction of the costs of plowing his land because he works on it himself, suggesting at the same time that the guarantee of these loans be linked to the guarantee of the same mechanism that the farmer obtains, in light of the difficulty of finding guarantors.
In turn, the farmer, Hamad Kiwan, explained that he had obtained a loan to buy an agricultural tractor worth 46 million pounds, over a ten-year repayment period, which constitutes 70 percent of the value of the tractor, in return for paying 30 percent of its value through the Agricultural Bank, indicating that he provided guarantors in addition to real estate. He owns an arboretum of 7 dunums, proposing to raise the loan ceiling for tractors during the coming period to match the high prices.
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