EL TIEMPO, February 28, 2025
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, CSN Volunteer Translator)
As part of its push to support small and medium sized producers in the country’s agriculture sector, increase group lending, and improve productive capacity, marketing and competition in the market, so far this year, Colombia’s Agrarian Bank has issued 148 loans to associations. That’s an increase of 3,600% in comparison with the same period in 2024, when there were only four.
That was the announcement by the Bank’s President, Hernando Chica Zuccardi, who highlighted these figures when he took part in the Pact for Land and Life event in Chicoral, Tolima Department. He also emphasized that the Bank had increased loans to associations by 54%, equaling 2,813 million pesos (roughly USD $685,000 at current exchange rates) as compared with 1,830 million pesos (roughly USD $445,700 at current exchange rates) in the first months of the previous year.
Those results reflect the commitment by the Agrarian Bank to strengthen agriculture through financing mechanisms that can promote productivity. This is how the Bank is working to broaden its impact in the countryside. “For 2025, we’ve set a goal of increasing loans to associations by 500% and being able to lend 186,000 million pesos (roughly USD $45,400,000 at current exchange rates), by using that concept,” said Chica Zuccardi.
The associations are key to the progress of small and medium sized producers in Colombia, and also for the development of the countryside. Therefore, the Bank has created products designed to support those that join together in associations, cooperatives, or other kinds of collective effort, allowing them to have access to financing and improve their ability to compete.
With these organizations, producers are able to reduce costs, improve their ability to negotiate, reach larger markets, and strengthen the social fabric in rural areas. Starting there, one of the principal objectives of the Agrarian Bank can be to promote association in all productive activities and keep working to promote this kind of financing in favorable conditions, in line with national government policy.
“We want to promote credit to associations, because we’re sure that organizing can be the better part of the future of Colombia’s agriculture sector, and that’s why our work teams will continue going all over the whole countryside, together with agencies like the Solidarity and Social Prosperity Unit, among others, bringing skills training and financial education with a cooperative focus,” said Chica Zuccardi.
Specifically, for Sylvia Magnolia Ordoñez, a piangüera (harvester of mussels) (Raizes del Manglar) in Tumaco, Nariño Department, the credit association has allowed them to improve their living conditions and contribute to the development of the region.
“The Agrarian Banks’s rates are very low, and we have the space to be able to pay them, which means that you have the peace of mind to work without fear that you won’t be able to make the payment. That has made this credit a success in our region. In my case, it’s also allowed me to organize better and to know that it’s the kind of credit that improves living conditions,” said Sylvia.
Since August of 2022, 34,348 million pesos (roughly USD $8,400,000 at current exchange rates) have been granted in loans to associations. That has benefited 77 associations, made up of 2,310 families. Seventy percent of the applications for credit in that period were approved by the Bank.
Thus, during this administration, 60,660 commercial brigades have been created, which has impacted more than 455,000 customers.