Peter Ng'etich
19 August 2003
Nairobi — The Government is to spend Sh9 billion on the Agricultural Finance Corporation.
The money is be loaned to farmers at an interest rate of not more than 10 per cent over five years to help them increase production.
In an interview with the Nation at the weekend, Agriculture minister Kipruto Kirwa said the Government would also waive interest on loans to maize and wheat farmers due to poor harvests.
"Farmers will only be required to pay what they borrowed to broaden the corporation's financial base," Mr Kirwa said. The Government would also consider writing off the loans the farmers owe the AFC.
He said: "The past government wrote off AFC loans to some farmers and left many others who were suffering due to lack of market for their commodities."
Mr Kirwa was addressing a rally at Ng'eny Primary School in Uasin Gishu District.
The minister said those whose loans were written off were Kanu insiders who milked the corporation dry through dubious deals.
"From the list I obtained, it was only big names who took millions of shillings and were exempted, leaving genuine loanees to suffer when the economy was doing badly during the Kanu regime," Mr Kirwa said, adding the Narc Government was committed to the welfare of the common man.
At the same time, Mr Kirwa said the Kenya Farmers Association had been returned to farmers and was being reformed. It would import agricultural inputs in readiness for the planting season.
He said this could not have happened earlier because the Government had hardly settled in office.
"I want to apologise to farmers that they could not get credit from AFC and farm inputs from KFA because we had not settled in our ministries. From next year, the organisations will be fully operational," he said.
Accompanied by the managing director of Agricultural Development Corporation, Mr William Kirwa, and Cllr Kipkorir arap Menjo, the minister said ADC would revert to growing seed maize to make it cheap for farmers.
ADC would also start breeding high-quality dairy cattle for sale to farmers to improve their stocks.
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