By Jovita Mirembe
Financial Institutions have been asked to lower interest rates for farmers to be able to access loans to develop their farming business.
Agnes Kirabo, the Executive Director of Food Rights Alliance said that many farmers, especially women have failed to progress in their farming businesses because they can’t access loans from financial institutions due to the high rates.
“I am appealing to the Government through the Ministry of Agriculture to talk to financial institutions to lower interest rates for farmers so that they can progress in their farming businesses,” she said.
“Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UBOS) estimates that about 68% of Uganda’s working population is employed in agriculture,” Kirabo said.
She said that Uganda grows a wide range of agriculture foodstuffs namely; sorghum, coffee, sweet potatoes, edible oils, livestock, tea, sugar, fish, groundnuts, tobacco, plantains, corn, beans, cassava, millet, and cotton among others.
Denis Mulongo Maholo, the Agriculture Ministry Assistant Commissioner Animal Nutrition/ Principal Rage Ecologist, said if farmers are supported by the government to get loans at a lower interest rate, they will contribute to the country’s foreign exchange without difficulty.
He said this during a five-day stakeholders workshop for the Resilient African Feed and Fodder Systems ( RAFFS) project held at Hotel Africana in Kampala that ended on 15 March.
Over 50 participants from Uganda, Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria, Somalia and Zimbabwe attended the workshop.
These countries have a population of close to 400 million people facing similar challenges in the feed and fodder sector where a solution is being formulated to curb the problems.
