Cuito – At least 35 business plans for agricultural production will be financed in central Bié province until December this year, to the value of two million 766,899 dollars, under the Commercial Agriculture Development Project (PDAC).
The information was given on Thursday in Cuito city by the director of the Bié Agriculture and Forestry Office, Felisberto Brito Capepula, for whom the initiative aims to promote the growth of this sector and agribusiness in the province.
He said that since the start of the project in March 2022, 18 young people have already been contemplated, seven in Catabola, the same number in Chinguar and four in Camacupa, with funding of four million kwanzas each, totalling Kz 72 million.
The source also said that the PDAC has so far disbursed 156 million 130 thousand 50 kwanzas, with the recent approval of five more business plans.
In Bié province, the Ministry of Agriculture's Commercial Agriculture Development Project covers the municipalities of Chinguar, Catabola and Camacupa, to increase productivity and improve access to markets for rural products, with a view to promoting agribusiness.
Initiated in the provinces of Kwanza-Norte, Kwanza-Sul and Malanje, the PDAC now covers Benguela, Bié, Bengo, Luanda, Huambo, Huíla and Uíge.
Its aim is to create production and marketing infrastructures to strengthen and improve the business environment, taking into account the comparative advantages in the value chain of maize, beans, soya and coffee crops and the production of chickens and eggs.
The project has a budget of 230 million dollars and is funded by the World Bank (WB) with 130 million and the French Development Agency (AFD) with 100 million dollars.
For the provision of credit, they are working with the Credit Guarantee Fund, a financial institution that deals with Banco Sol and Banco de Fomento Angola (BFA), with responsibility for granting interest of up to 7.5 per cent, according to an instruction from the National Bank of Angola (BNA).
In order to access the credit, the farmer must have a farm with more than 10 hectares of land, a certificate of non-debtor status from both the National Social Security Institute (INSS) and the General Tax Administration (AGT).
The next step is for the farms to be inspected in order to assess their technical, administrative and commercial capacity, especially those that produce maize, beans, soya, coffee, eggs and chickens.
The aim of the project is to encourage the transition from family and subsistence farming to commercial farming, with higher yields, better quality and potentially exportable products, the sale of which will make it possible to improve farmers' incomes and balance the country's trade balance, which is very unbalanced due to the large quantities of food that Angola imports for domestic consumption.
For this reason, the farmers will benefit from training programmes and other components within the project, so that this investment multiplies the number of jobs and so that the peasant farmer can walk "on his own" through the wealth/profit he should create with the implementation of commercial agriculture.
Membership of the PDAC is also aimed at farmers' associations and co-operatives and small and medium-sized enterprises in the livestock sector. JEC/PLB/DAN/DOJ
