Angola: Agricultural Fund Gets 5 Billion Kwanzas

Luanda — The Agricultural Development Support Fund (FADA) has received five billion kwanzas from the National Treasury to provide financial resources to community funds within agricultural co-operatives and associations.

To this end, it has created a financial product called Credit for Community Caisses, in which beneficiaries can receive up to 25 million kwanzas.

The information was given on Tuesday by the FADA’s CEO, Felisbela Francisco, who was speaking on the occasion of the signing of a memorandum between the institution and the Institute for Agrarian Development (IDA).

In an interview on the sidelines of the event, she said that the agreement establishes the general principles of institutional cooperation between the parties in the field of family farming and essentially aims, on the one hand, to improve access to credit for agricultural cooperatives and associations with community banks.

The agreement also aims to provide training by the IDA, capacity building and the specialised technical assistance needed by the beneficiaries of this credit, with the aim of mitigating the risks associated with the inappropriate use of agricultural and animal production techniques and defaulting on the credit.

According to the official, as part of the stimulus measures, FADA was tasked with boosting the cooperatives that have set up community banks, which through the financial product, identified, with the support of the IDA, all the cooperatives in Malanje, Bié, Huambo and Kwanza Sul.

“Clarification sessions have already been held on access to funding, given that FADA still has no regional representation. We have the support of the IDA in receiving the proposals and it has sent them to FADA, which makes the final decision at committee level,” she said.

She also said that more than 194 requests from cooperatives have been approved and some disbursements are already being made to more than 10 processes that have already been formalised, with the total number of requests expected to be funded by 15 November.

With regard to the main difficulties encountered, she pointed to the legalisation of cooperatives and land.

Felisbela Francisco revealed that FADA’s credit portfolio is currently valued at more than 2,000 financed projects and more than 13 billion kwanzas invested.

In turn, Felismino da Costa, the director general of the IDA, believes that developing a methodology for increasing family production in rural areas is one of the biggest challenges, including making inputs and other equipment available.