Jakarta, March 25 (Antara) - The launch of the Food Acceleration, Synergy, and Financial Inclusion program, called the Food AKSI program, Friday, in West Sumatra, is expected to maintain food resilience and improve the farmers' welfare in the agricultural sector.
The Financial Services Authority (OJK) launched the Food AKSI program in Sepuluh Kota District, West Sumatra, which is a synergy policy for accelerating financial inclusion to achieve food sovereignty.
The program is basically an integrated upstream and downstream financing program in the agricultural sector aimed at increasing the production of agricultural products and the prosperity of farmers in the country.
"The Food AKSI program is a concrete effort made by the OJK, along with the related ministries, government agencies, and financial service industries, to speed up and improve food sector financing, especially for the 11 main commodities," OJK Chairman D. Hadad stated in Jakarta on Friday.
According to Chief Economic Minister Darmin Nasution, the program is important for bringing about a development and transformation in Indonesia's agricultural sector.
"It is very important for the development and transformation of our agricultural sector," Nasution emphasized during the program's launch in West Sumatra on Friday.
The program can prevent wastage of agricultural produce, as the process is managed optimally and increases commodity yields.
"One should not assume that so far, there are no wastages in the process of rice production until it is supplied to the consumers, let alone horticultural products," Nasution noted.
He cited as an example the wastage in the rice production process. From the harvest in the fields until the end of its process into husked rice, some 20 percent wastage is encountered in rice production. This figure is relatively large.
Hence, the Food AKSI program is important and stresses on the integrated upstream and downstream values of the agricultural sector.
The chief economic minister expressed hope that the program would help the government to build food resilience and improve the welfare of the farmers.
The program is being implemented in cooperation with ministries, government agencies, and financial service industries through concerted upstream-downstream financing efforts using credits from the banking and capital market sectors.
The Food AKSI program involves producers, village logistics, fertilizer and seed suppliers, processors, and buyers. Moreover, 23 banking and non-banking financial industries and three financial technology companies, or e-commerce firms, which have core businesses in the agriculture and food sectors, are also part of the program.
It also involves offering insurance of agricultural products, cattle, and fishermen as well as providing financial technology and ensuring synergy with various related institutions. The information technology (IT) is used in the agricultural sector for cultivation, post harvest, distribution, sales, and financial literacy, among others.
Intensive counseling is also provided to ensure increase in the production capacity, skills, and technology as well as to boost financial access and literacy.
"The program is expected to overcome the problem of limited financing access to achieve resilience in the food sector, notably in agriculture, plantation, and fisheries," Hadad said.
The Food AKSI program is part of the follow-up Synergy Program of Action for People's Economy which was launched by President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) in April 2016.
This program is also part of the implementation of the National Strategy for Financial Inclusion (SNKI) launched by the President in November 2016.
"Hopefully, this action can address the problem of limited access to financing, especially in the agricultural sector, food security, forestry, agriculture, and fisheries," Hadad said.
OJK expects the program to become a national movement for introducing and implementing a financing scheme and to support the momentum of accelerating access to financing in the food sector
Through this program, in 2017, a total of 19 bank partners have set a target of increasing loans by 14.12 percent to Rp260 trillion for farmers, forest and labors.
Meanwhile, farmers' insurance and premiums will increase by 64.88 percent to Rp180 billion while the acreage of insured land will increase to one million hectares. Cattle business insurance and premiums will jump 238.42 percent to Rp27 billion and the number of insured cows surge to 120,000 heads of cattle.
Credit guarantee in the agricultural sector rose by 5.42 percent to Rp8.8 trillion and KUR (micro loan) credit guarantee in the agricultural sector rose by 5.44 percent to Rp9.9 trillion.
The launch of the program in West Sumatra on Friday was attended by the Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs, members of Commission XI of the House of Representatives and the Governor of West Sumatra province.
In addition, officials from the Agriculture Ministry, the Ministry of Trade, the Agrarian Ministry were also present, apart from associations and industry leaders, as well as financial services and financial technology players (FinTech) in the agriculture sector.
(A014/INE)EDITED BY INE(T.A014/A/BESSR/A. Abdussalam) 25-03-2017 12:09: |
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