Thursday, November 22, 2012 | 3:18 PM
KINGSTON, Jamaica — Junior Agriculture minister Ian Hayles has made an appeal to local banks for a reduction in interest rates on agricultural lo
According to Hayles when comparisons are made with lending rates in the Caribbean, farmers in Jamaica were paying up to 10 per cent while farmers elsewhere were being provided with rates of up to three per cent.
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“At the end of every financial year the bank will tell you that they made $12 billion in profit, I’m appealing to the banks put away $200m or $300m of that money and offer the farmers rates of between two and four per cent so they can go into production,” said Hayles.
The minister made his appeal at the graduation ceremony for 29 RADA trained members of the Tawes Meadows Community in Spanish Town held at the Caymanas Golf and Country Club yesterday (November 21).
The four-week project funded by the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF) is an inter-agency initiative with assistance provided through RADA, and Food for the Poor.
The project provided training opportunities to some 50 beneficiaries; who were exposed to livestock production, crop production, home economics and apiculture, impacting over 30 families in the communities of Tawes Meadows and Ellerslie Pen.
In addition to the training, participants were provided with four acres of land to begin production.
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