'The Governor's answer did not satisfy the questions raised by the delegates'

After the Governor's speech on agricultural credit, the National Assembly Chairman said so and raised some questions.

On the morning of November 20, during the question-and-answer session with the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, the National Assembly Chairman asked the Governor to clarify credit incentives for the agricultural sector. However, the information the Governor provided was not new and was quite general. The National Assembly Chairman commented: "When you say that, the issues raised by the delegates are not satisfied."

Governor of the State Bank Nguyen Van Binh

Immediately after that, the National Assembly Chairman asked the Governor to focus on the following contents: Support for building flood-proof houses; large-scale fields, linking banks, enterprises, and farmers; with some national agricultural products, what measures are there to support, increase export value, competitiveness, and direct support for rice. In addition to the long-term fundamental solutions as Minister Cao Duc Phat said, there is support for temporary storage of rice, coffee, and some key agricultural products.

Responding to the requests of the National Assembly Chairman, the Governor said: "Firstly, regarding temporary storage of rice, we provide full capital, not a single dong missing and not a single day late."

According to the Governor, major agricultural products such as tra and basa fish have been provided with a large amount of capital, and the current outstanding debt in this sector is 25,000 billion VND. “Recently, we have visited localities and seen the difficulties of tra and basa fish farmers and shrimp farmers, and have made proposals and resolved what is within our authority (debt restructuring, interest exemption and reduction, etc.). As for the contents beyond our authority, we have reported to the Prime Minister to coordinate with ministries and branches to resolve. We hope that in the coming time, with this support, tra and basa fish producers can overcome difficulties and continue to maintain production,” said the Governor.

For coffee, the banking system's outstanding loans have so far met all capital needs. Due to the sharp drop in coffee prices, the Government has proposed a mechanism for temporary storage of coffee and the banking system has met capital needs for this.

Although the Government has not yet had an official policy on coffee replanting, the banking sector sees this as necessary because it takes 3-5 years to harvest. Therefore, the bank has allocated 12,000 billion VND for replanting, of which 2,000 billion VND is for Lam Dong alone. Recently, under the leadership of the Agricultural Bank, banks have gone to 5 Central Highlands provinces to carry out this task.

However, according to Mr. Binh, to replant coffee trees, capital is only one factor, while varieties and planning are more important.

Some other areas such as lending activities for the poor, total outstanding debt up to 118,000 billion. In recent times, despite difficulties, credit growth for the poor averaged 7-10%, while the bad debt balance of this bank was very low, less than 1%. This has ensured revolving capital for the poor in recent times.

Recently, the State Bank also submitted to the Government a lending mechanism for near-poor households and is also submitting to the Government a mechanism to help people who have escaped poverty escape poverty sustainably.

In the long term, we are working with the Ministry of Agriculture to have a new credit mechanism to serve the connection between households, serving not the production of farming households but the connection of farming households in new cooperative models.

“We ask the government for a guarantee mechanism for the agricultural sector. No matter how difficult it is, we must ensure an insurance mechanism for agriculture… We also prioritize the application of high technology in agriculture to have preferential policies in credit activities of the banking system,” the Governor added.

Most recently, the State Bank has submitted to the Government and has been approved a revised lending mechanism to support post-harvest loss reduction. Up to now, the Government has allowed that machinery and equipment serving this activity do not necessarily have to have a 60% localization rate and all banks can do it.

After the Governor's speech, the National Assembly Chairman expressed his thoughts on agriculture: "I am very worried about the declining growth rate of agriculture, and there is also an important reason that investment in agriculture, farmers, and rural areas has also decreased. The Minister of Finance and Planning and Investment needs to consider and calculate further. According to the spirit of the Central Resolution on Agriculture and Rural Development, investment in this sector must be higher next year than the previous year and must double every 5 years, meaning growth must be 20% each year"./.

According to VOV