Nallely Hernández / Reform Agency
Friday, April 14, 2023 | 9:50 p.m.
Mexico City.- For the country’s agricultural producers, the extinction of Financiera Rural de Desarrollo (FND) will represent greater difficulty in obtaining credit, especially for smaller ones that only have financing through development banks.
Heriberto Hernández, president of the Organization of Pig Farmers of Mexico, pointed out that although pork producers are not clients of Financiera Rural, but of Trusts Established in Relation to Agriculture (FIRA), the concern with the disappearance of FND will be the lack financing to the primary sector.
“FIRA should be reinforced, because if they are going to leave the entire burden of the sector to it, based on the experience we have with this institution, we believe that it is a great institution, but it has to be reinforced by the Government to attend to all the needs of the sector” he explained.
He assured that the current agricultural support programs are subsidies that favor self-consumption, leaving the producing sector without options.
“We do not have only one program for producers and for the pig sector, we have programs for self-consumption, the family, but not for the producer, that producer who generates his own employment, there is not a single support,” said the head of Opormex.
Vicente Gómez Cobo, president of the Mexican Dairy Federation (Femeleche), said that Financiera Rural as a development bank focused on serving smaller producers with loans starting at 250,000 pesos, while larger ones go to FIRA.
For the dairy representative, the increase in the past-due portfolio of Financiera Rural, one of the Executive’s arguments for its extinction, reflects the complex situation that Mexican producers face due to the lack of targeted support.
“The fact that there is such a large volume of non-payment gives us an indication of how difficult the last few years have been with the increase in production costs, the fall in prices, inflation, the pandemic and there has been no financial support from any kind for the sector,” he said.
He considered that in view of the intention of closing a financing institution, the Government must have an alternative ready so as not to ignore agricultural production and fail to comply with the Food Security objectives.
“One of the demands of the agricultural sector is the lack of credits at competitive rates, and if this objective was not achieved with the Financiera, today if a new mechanism is not generated to attend to this size of producers, there will be limitations and it will put a good part of the country’s productive capacity at risk,” said the dairy businessman.
