Agribank, the country’s leading agricultural financial lender, is placing special emphasis on small-scale remote farmers through its latest initiative Branch-on-Wheels, which takes its services closer to prospective and existing clients.
The State-owned agricultural bank recently launched its Branch-on-Wheels initiative, which will break geographical barriers that obstructs farmers from accessing much-needed funding to realise their full farming potential.
The deployment of the Branch-on-Wheels kicked off yesterday in Tsumeb and will be in the town until Friday.
From there, it will head to Opuwo and will be stationed there from 19 to 23 February.
It will then head to Karasburg from 3 to 5 March.
From 7 and 8 March, the Branch-on-Wheels will be in Bethanie and 17 to 19 March in Gochas.
The initiative will be operating from 08h00 until 17h30 in all the areas.
Agribank’s sales executive Hildegardt Martin said the Branch-on-Wheels concept aspires to extend Agribank services to customers in areas with no Agribank branches, as clients in such areas find it hard to reach the physical branches that are only found in selected towns.
“Therefore, the Branch-on-Wheels will go to the customer, breaking geographical barriers that hamper farmers/clients from accessing funding from Agribank, to realise their farming potential. The bank takes this initiative very seriously and will ensure that the entire country is covered by assigning a Branch-on-Wheels team for each of the eight branches of the bank. By doing so, the bank expects to reach a wider customer base in remotest towns, at the convenience of the customer,” she said.
On his part, Agribank’s marketing and communication manager Rino Muranda, implored potential clients to make use of this opportunity to secure funding for their farming operations and potentially access lucrative markets with the assistance of the bank.
“Our competent staff in the scheduled areas and towns will be providing the following services; accepting loan applications; general enquiries and information sharing; printing of statements; update on loan applications status; and loan approvals where possible. Agribank offers competitive fixed interest rates as low as 4% for some loan products (communal, labourer houses in commercial areas); it provides flexible repayment options often based on the cashflow of the agri-enterprise; while also offering extended loan repayment periods resulting in affordable instalments,” he said. Agribank serves all farmers, including commercial, communal, emerging, and resettled farmers. The bank finances the entire agricultural value chain, offering a range of loan products such as vehicle and tractor loans, salary-backed/no collateral loans, horticulture production loans, farming infrastructure, and implements loans amongst others.
In recent years, Agribank introduced the women and youth scheme, a targeted intervention that offers relaxed terms and conditions in favour of women and the youth.