In Benin, the government's allocation of FCFA 100 billion ($181 million) to the National Fund for Agricultural Development (FNDA) is resurfacing. Recall that in the Council of Ministers of July 29, the government had allocated this sum to Window 3 of the FDNA dedicated to financial services, with the aim of improving and facilitating the access of agricultural producers to loans from banks and financial systems. decentralized, underlines the media Xinhua.

On Wednesday, the Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Gaston Dossouhoui, and the FNDA began an information and awareness campaign on the ins and outs of this aid to actors in the agricultural sector. Thus, farmers must prepare to receive the FNDA teams who will be deployed throughout the national territory from November 26 to inform them of these financing facilities.

“Banks will finance agricultural SMEs/SMIs under the following conditions: amount capped at FCFA 500 million with 9% interest rate (2% per year for beneficiaries of the subsidy) over a period of 5 years. A 50% FNDA guarantee and an additional promoter guarantee.

“As for micro-finance institutions (Sfd), they will finance small producers and farmers. An amount capped at FCFA 50 million with a maximum interest rate of 12% per year (2% per year for beneficiaries of the subsidy) over a maximum period of 3 years. Also in this case, the FNDA guarantee will always be capped at 50%, ”we can read in the columns of Portail Info.

In general, the great mass of family-type producers has difficulty accessing financing. When it is ensured, the financing of the agricultural sector is mainly the responsibility of micro-finance institutions, projects having lines of agricultural credit and more rarely, by commercial banks. In addition, loans are mainly short-term (80%), less frequent in the medium term (less than 20%) and extremely rare in the long term. Moreover, apart from the cotton sector, banks are reluctant to finance agricultural sectors because of the various hazards of the sector.

This aid to the FNDA must be put into perspective with the boost sent on October 14 by the Beninese government to the National Program for the Development of Agricultural Mechanization and the allocation of FCFA 10 billion for the acquisition of fertilizers and agricultural equipment (Read: Benin takes a further step towards agricultural mechanization). Benin is slowly operating an agricultural transformation.