At the Cabinet meeting today, Premier Jiang Yi-huah enjoined the Council of Agriculture (COA) to step up its agricultural financial assistance, management and guidance.
After a COA briefing on its efforts in this regard, Jiang stated that because the operations of the credit departments of farmers' and fishermen's associations have gradually steadied, the council should focus on expanding policy-oriented special agricultural loans and the Agricultural Credit Guarantee Fund (ACGF).
The ACGF has fully played its role of providing credit guarantees to farmers and fishermen who are economically disadvantaged and lack collateral to acquire loans, the COA said. As of the end of August this year, the fund had helped over 20,000 farmers' and fishermen's households to acquire loans amounting to approximately NT$10.1 billion (US$336.7 million).
Furthermore, the COA has continued to promote various special agricultural loans in coordination with the government's policies of the golden agricultural corridor project, value-added agriculture in the free economic pilot zones, and recreational agriculture. In the meantime, the council has supervised farmers' and fishermen's associations' qualification reviews and checks, enhancement of internal control and management, and strengthening of external auditing in order to ensure the efficacy of special agricultural loans.
The COA should continue to strengthen management and guidance of these associations' credit departments, raising their operational performance and augmenting internal supervision and control so that they will be on solid footing and truly help enhance farmers' and fishermen's business competitiveness, Jiang instructed. The council stated that its efforts in this area have already garnered concrete results with respect to the credit departments' scope of operations, quality of loans, management of risks and generation of profits.
The government is duty-bound to promote agricultural development and look after the livelihoods of farmers and fishermen, the premier pointed out. Given present domestic and international economic uncertainties as well as the trend toward trade liberalization, the government must do whatever it can to provide farmers and fishermen with business loans, and assist and guide them in agricultural upgrading and transformation so that they can overcome their challenges, he urged.