Govt urged to delay title deeds

most of them would by now have surrended their farms to repay loans.
“I would like to thank the President, Cde Robert Mugabe, for delaying the process,” he said.
“It was actually a very wise decision because the majority of the farmers would have been landless by now after using the title deeds as collateral.
“Government should delay issuing title deeds in the wake of the current wave of property attachments and auctioning.
“Many farmers have lost properties ranging from houses, cars, generators and even livestock to their contractors or financiers.”
The issuance of title deeds, he said, would make sense after most farmers were established and able to fund their operations.
Mr Mukwende said contractors and bankers who were attaching the farmers’ properties were “heartless”.
“The situation prevailing in the agricultural sector at the moment is not encouraging,” he said.
“Farmers cannot access funding and when they manage to, the cost of borrowing the money makes farming very unviable.
“Banks are charging interest rates of around 30 percent, while those in arrears are forced to pay interest rates of 50 percent per annum.”
Zimbabwe National Farmers’ Union vice president Mr Stanislaus Goredema said delaying the issuance of title deeds would temporarily safeguard the interests of the farmers.
He said there was a need for an elaborate policy on financing agriculture.
“In the past, there was the Agricultural Finance Corporation that funded farmers. In our case Agribank should be empowered to do that so that farmers are less dependent on contractors and commercial banks,” said Mr Goredema.
He said that banks were reluctant to fund agriculture because of liquidity challenges. Suppliers of inputs were not committing themselves because Government owed them moeny from last season, said Mr Goredema.
Farmers are struggling to raise working capital to finance the 2012/13 farming season.
Some of them are losing implements to creditors.
In areas such as Madziwa, Rushinga, Mbire, Mt Darwin and Gokwe, many cotton farmers have had their property attached and auctioned in the past few weeks.