Agribank restructuring to be complete by end of March
VINCENT MHENE IN GWERU
The restructuring of Agribank into a land bank will be complete by the end of March this year, a Cabinet minister has said, as the government moves to support the agriculture recovery plan.
Plans to restructure Agribank were approved by Cabinet in August last year which will see the State-owned bank offer more comprehensive services to farmers.
Government has identified agriculture as one of the key sectors, alongside mining and tourism, which will anchor economic recovery.
Lands, Agriculture, Water and Rural Resettlement Minister, Anxious Masuka, said the new model would fit the financing of subsistence and commercial farmers, as well as small-holder irrigation producers.
“By 31 March, (the two main divisions) will be called the Land and Agriculture Bank of Zimbabwe.
Their model fits the financing of these (irrigation) schemes. There are four hundred of them, 26 000 hectares, so it’s an incredible area that we must see the households improve their lives,” Masuka said at the tour of Insukamini Irrigation Scheme in Gweru District last week.
He added: “The bank will continue to offer all the services and functions it has been carrying out.”
Agribank executive director for Retail Banking and Agricultural Development, Francis Macheka, said the lender was accelerating the process to ensure they meet the March 31, 2021 deadline.
“There will be two institutions, one of them being Agribank as you know it and then there will be the Land Bank, which will be in operation by the end of March. The work that is ongoing between Agribank, government, and other stakeholders is to have these institutions properly registered and structured so that we meet the March 31, 2021 deadline,” Macheka said.
He added that the Land Bank was expected to finance agricultural development projects and will enable farmers, especially small-scale farmers, who have been struggling to borrow from banks due to lack of security of tenue and title deeds.
Banks have also been shunning the 99-year leases as collateral, arguing that they were not transferable, in the event that a farmer borrows money and failed to repay.
Macheka said the small holder farmers are expected to benefit from the Land Bank through leasing machinery from its equipment leasing unit.
“The unit will be very complimentary to this bank, in the sense that those small-holder farmers who can`t afford their own tractors can hire from the special purpose leasing vehicle, for example, they can hire combine harvesters.”
Government envisions the Land and Agricultural Development Bank of Zimbabwe providing more functions such as establishing linkages between farmers and structured markets and providing working capital for new agricultural infrastructure. ffffffffff
