Vusumuzi Dube
Judith Phiri, Business Reporter
AGRICULTURAL Finance Company (AFC) Holdings has reaffirmed its readiness to finance and support farmers for the 2023-2024 summer cropping season, through its development financial institution (DFI) the Land and Development Bank of Zimbabwe.
This will be supported with mechanisation services from the AFC Leasing Company and Insurance through AFC Insurance Company, while the AFC Commercial Bank will support through banking services.
In a statement, AFC Holdings said the scope of support covers smallholder farmers, medium and large scale farmers, contracting entities, irrigation schemes and various other value chain partners in the agricultural value chain.
AFC Holdings Group Chief Executive, Mr Francis Macheka said their four companies were working closely with the Government to drive towards vision 2030. Mr Macheka said the AFC Land and Development Bank was fully committed and prepared to honour the national obligation to drive food security and improve access to finance for the approaching 2023/2024 summer season.
“During the inaugural summer cropping season, the Land Bank funded a circa of 8 700 hectares of summer crop to the tune of ZWL$900 million which contributed about 44 700 metric tonnes to national grain production. We doubled that during the 2022/2023 summer season and financed about 13 710 hectares. For the current winter wheat season, we are pleased to have financed about 17 400 hectares and are projecting over 78 000 metric tonnes of wheat, which is nearly double the hectarage we financed in our maiden year of operation,” he said.
Mr Macheka noted that for the coming summer cropping season, they were targeting to finance at least 25 000 hectares of maize to tune of $137,5 billion, while they are projecting over 150 000 tonnes of grain to feed into the national grain reserves.
In addition, Mr Macheka said AFC Land Bank has also signed a US$8.35 million contract for a seed-revolving facility with the African Development Bank, through the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
He said this fund will play a significant role towards the availability of finance during the summer cropping season.
“Farmers have started coming through to our branches throughout the country to initiate the process to access this funding. We are also pleased to note a significant of our now “regular” farmers who have been accessing this summer crop fund for a number of years now. Support to women and youth amounted to about 12 percent of total loans in 2021/22 and this has increased to 16 percent in 2022/23. Our aim is to ensure we remain women and youth friendly to drive these ratios upwards.”
He said through the Land and Development Bank and AFC Commercial Bank they have signed a US$24 million Belarus Tractor Facility with the Ministry of Finance for over 580 tractors to be accessed by farmers through financing facility.
Mr Macheka said the facility has received an overwhelming interest with over 160 applications received to date and is playing a key role in driving the access to mechanization services throughout the summer cropping season.
“Our Leasing Company has already covered significant ground in terms of land preparation for the summer season. We have about 22 AFC Leasing’s cluster centers which are spread all over the country to offer convenience to our farming communities. We have over 610 tractors and 60 Combine harvesters available to all farmers this summer season.”
In addition, he said the AFC Insurance will be fully supporting the insurance needs of the farmers throughout the summer cropping season. Since its inception, AFC Insurance has provided crop insurance coverage for more than 50 000 hectares of both winter and summer crops and it is geared up to provide cover for more than 100,000 hectares in the 2023 – 2024 summer cropping season.
Bongani Ndlovu