The Agricultural Promotion Fund's operations still face many difficulties.

Over the years, the City's Agricultural Promotion Fund has helped thousands of households access loans to develop production and improve their livelihoods. However, the fund still faces numerous difficulties and obstacles in its implementation.

A farmer raising egg-laying chickens in Lien Chau commune, Thanh Oai district, borrows capital from the Hanoi Agricultural Promotion Fund. Photo: Anh Ngoc

According to Nguyen Van Minh, Director of the Van Duc Agricultural Production, Business and Service Cooperative (Gia Lam district), without substantial capital, the cooperative would be unable to invest in purchasing agricultural products from farmers during harvest season and would be unable to maintain operations according to its production and business plan.

Therefore, departments and agencies need to advise the city to supplement loan capital for the Agricultural Promotion Fund and increase loan limits so that cooperatives investing in high-tech applications can access this preferential loan capital.

Sharing the same view, Nguyen Van Khiem, Director of the Thanh Oai District Agricultural Service Center, said: due to the regulations of the Agricultural Promotion Fund, which only provides loans for working capital (seeds, feed, supplies, machinery) and not for infrastructure development, most households borrow for livestock farming and aquaculture.

Furthermore, no high-tech agricultural models have yet received loans, as the loan limits are very low compared to the investment in infrastructure for these high-tech agricultural models (no more than 500 million VND per project).

According to Nguyen Duy Nam, Head of the Agricultural Extension Fund Management Department (Hanoi Agricultural Extension Center), loan applications require many procedures, and the time taken to complete asset mortgage documents for some households is prolonged, affecting the disbursement progress. Many households are facing difficulties in mortgaging assets to borrow capital due to the very low land prices for residential land; some households even have to mortgage up to two plots of land to meet the loan requirements.

Notably, in the current situation, the target group for production development loans is very diverse. Many rural labor-intensive industries do not have the conditions to borrow from the Agricultural Promotion Fund because they are not included in the eligible loan groups according to regulations. In addition, the short lease term for production land affects the investment of households when accessing capital from the Agricultural Promotion Fund.

The practical implementation process has revealed that the Regulations on the Management and Use of the Agricultural Promotion Fund, issued with Decision No. 142/2007/QD-UBND dated December 10, 2007, by the Hanoi People's Committee, have shown some shortcomings and limitations affecting the effectiveness of the Agricultural Promotion Fund. Specifically, there are limitations regarding the scale and target groups for borrowing from the Agricultural Promotion Fund; and the regulations on organizational structure and policies for specialized and part-time staff working for the Agricultural Promotion Fund are not yet specific.

Meanwhile, the organizational structure of the Agricultural Extension Fund changed due to the transfer of agricultural extension stations to the People's Committees at the district and town levels as part of the pilot program to establish Agricultural Service Centers. The Agricultural Extension Centers had to reorganize the subcommittees managing the district and town-level Agricultural Extension Funds, thus creating certain difficulties in managing the Fund.

Source: https://kinhtedothi.vn/hoat-dong-quy-khuyen-nong-con-nhieu-kho-khan.html