Dim view on Sir Puka’s allocation

MINISTER for Agriculture and Livestock Sir Puka Temu’s announcement to allocate K100 million to the National Development Bank for agriculture credit support took a dim view yesterday.
Coffee farmer and East New Britain Farmers Association deputy chairman Benson Paparai was critical about tough policies and processes in place to qualify farmers to access such funds.
Though, Paparai explained, it was transparent that way, the concern was the difficulty small farmers would face qualifying when seeking access to this fund.
He likened these tough processes to other activities that are also allocated such funding.
“The policies and processes are very tough, in the sense that you have to have huge amount of money to show proof of security, in which case small farmers lose opportunities to big players.
“These processes need to be changed to make it easier for small
farmers and people in rural areas to qualify
for funding under
this support scheme,” Paparai stressed.
He called on Sir Puka, as an alternative, to direct such funds to provincial institutions so that local farmers could walk in and even for the sake of getting proper advice on how to access the funds.
In the case of East New Britain, Paparai said the minister could channel the funds to Kokopo East New Britain Savings and Loans and Kokopo Micro Finance.
“By doing so, small farmers have greater chances to be eligible for funding. And at the same time reduces time was­ted on running around and more time to concentrate on the project.”