NATSAVE pays K600m to farmers for crop supply

THE National Savings and Credit Bank (NATSAVE) has remained an active participant in the country’s agriculture sector as it pays out about K600 million to the farmers for the crop they supplied to the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) in the last farming season.

NATSAVE is therefore targeting to pay out more than K600m in the next farming season as it intends to get a larger chunk of the FRA programme.

This is according to the NATSAVE Chief Executive Officer, Mr Malcom Chabala in an interview in Lusaka.

“As you are aware, NATSAVE is an active participant in the farming sector, we do support farmers quite actively so it will interest you to know that in the last farming season, we did pay out on behalf of FRA, K600m to the farmers out there for the crop they supplied to FRA,” Mr Chabala said.

Mr Chabala stated that NATSAVE had already signed up with FRA for the upcoming farming season to pay the farmers. NATSAVE, he stated, was looking forward to that and was targeting to do more than the K600m that was paid out in the previous farming season saying “we target to have a larger chunk among the commercial banks out of which is available.”

He also indicated that over K50 million had been collected on behalf of Government under the Farmers Input Support Programme (FISP).

These funds, Mr Chabala explained, were remitted to the Ministry of Agriculture.

“So you can see that we are an active player when it comes to the farming sector, so we are hoping that we will do much more in this new farming season. We know that Government is looking to scale up the support it gives to farmers as they are thinking of restructuring FISP.

“So we are looking forward to that and as NATSAVE, we are well placed to support Government in its support to farmers, leveraging on our wide network, we are present in all provinces,” Mr Chabala said. On the clients’ base, Mr Chabala said it had been growing quite aggressively over the last few years.

”At the moment we are sitting at over 3, 000 accounts so we know that by the close of the year that figure is going to grow significantly. We are confident because we have rolled out a number of products to make us more attractive,” he said.