RICE FARMERS IN 7 PROVINCES YET TO SECURE LOAN AS PRICES PLUNGE

The Department of Agriculture (DA) on Thursday said rice farmers in seven provinces have yet to secure the loan that should have helped them cope with the plunge in farm-gate prices caused by the surge in imports last year. In a statement, the DA said about P251 million is expected to be released once the processing of additional loan applications from seven provinces is completed. The DA identified these provinces as: Cagayan, Isabela, Quirino, Nueva Viscaya, Sorsogon, Albay and eastern Samar. The DA said its attached agency Agricultural Credit Policy Council (ACPC) is currently processing about 16,755 applications, of which 1,645 are for validation, 4,125 for certification of ACPC regional executive directors and 10,985 loan applications with respective LBPLending Centers are up for processing and/or releasing. The DA said that as of end-January, the ACPC has disbursed P2.249 billion, or 90 percent of its P2.5 billion loan fund, to about 150,000 rice farmers who borrowed under the government’s “expanded Survival and Recovery Assistance Loan Assistance for Rice Farmers” (esralarf) program. The DA added that about 149,910 rice farmers out of the 166,665 targeted potential borrowers have received their respective P15,000 cash assistance through distributed cash cards from the Land Bank of the Philippines. The esralarf program allows farmers tilling 1 hectare and below to borrow P15,000 from the government at zero interest and payable in eight years. The program was launched in September of 2019 as one of the government’s mitigating measures to help rice farmers, particularly marginalized ones, to cope with the sudden drop in the farm-gate prices of palay. The average farm-gate price of palay has sank below P16-per-kilogram level, markings its lowest quotation in eight years, following the implementation of the rice trade liberalization law that deregulated the rice industry. Aside from pulling farm-gate palay prices down, the surge in rice imports last year brought down the average retail price of regular-milled rice to its lowest level of six years of around P36.42 per kilogram, according to latest government estimates. The DA said a total of P45.06 million of cash assistance has been given to 3,004 rice farmers in Mindanao province.