AgriBank offers drought relief
• BY Veronica amaral
AgriBank said an additional N$104.6 million has been committed to the qualifying clients and will fully be credited as and when payments are due, and past-due accounts will be credited immediately.
43% of the population, which is 1,134 out of 2,634 clients, will benefit from the N$104.6 million. Nearly half of the client population will receive some of the allocated funds.
According to the criteria granted by the Minister of Finance and Public Enterprise (MFPE), the intervention is limited to AgriBank clients with farmland and livestock loan accounts. The drought relief will be implemented effectively as of 10 July 2024, and it will be in the form of an instalment relief and penalty interest waiver for clients.
The instalment relief targets clients in good standing and whose instalments fall from April to 31 March 2025.
Furthermore, AgriBank added that, as a courtesy, it would eliminate penalties for all of its clients who are behind on their payments, totalling almost 83 million dollars for this fiscal year.
The Chief Executive Officer of AgriBank, Raphael Karuaihe, said there have been some encounters between their clients and the bank.
“We are facing challenging times for both our clients and the bank. We want both to survive, and we are trying to balance many considerations to ensure our clients receive some scope to make it through this difficult period,” said Karuaihe.
Karuaihe cited that for AgriBank, the primary and sustainable source of funds is the repayment of loans by its clients.
The bank relies heavily on the timely repayment of loans to maintain its financial stability and operations.
Therefore, providing relief or extending further assistance to clients regarding loan repayments would pose a significant financial challenge for the bank at this particular juncture.
“For AgriBank, our primary and sustainable source of funds is loan payments by our clients.
This means extending the same relief to all bank clients is unfortunately not a financially viable option at this stage,” added Karuaihe.