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By Yaadika N Chama,

Government has urged called on commercial banks in the country to further reduce their lending rates in order to make finances available to the productive sectors of the economy.

Stanbic Bank Managing Director Joseph Chikolwa

And Stanbic Bank Managing Director Joseph Chikolwa said the agriculture sector needs tailor made products which are going to help improve agriculture production in the country.

He said this during the launch of the Stanbic  Banks Agriculture Banking. He said investing in agriculture is very crucial as it will help farmers growing different types of crops to increase their production.

Most importantly it will help the country meet its food requirements and have enough remain to export to neighbouring countries.

Daka said the agriculture sector needs all the support that it can get from the banking community in order to grow. We are aware of the challenges that farmers are experiencing in accessing loans and we are happy that Stanbic Bank has come up with a product that will help to meet the needs of its clients. He added that farmers had for a long time been crying for affordable long term financing which would allow them to improve their production, makes profits and payback the loans.

And Chikolwa hoped that the product which the bank had introduced, ‘Agriculture Banking’, would help to meet government’s objective of diversifying the economy from mining to agriculture. Meanwhile Standard Bank Head of Agriculture Jack Taylor said the bank had decided to introduce Agriculture Banking because Africa still had the potential to improve and meet the projected food shortage that the world was about to experience in the near future. Africa had land and good wealth to grow enough food for its own requirements and international markets as well. He noted that supply side growth is perceived to be insufficient hence the need to meet the projected food shortage in the near future.

And President Rupiah Banda told the World Bank that Zambia is trying to seek higher interest loan facilities from the Breton Wood  institute to finance the repair of roads damaged by mining activities in the country. Robert Zoellick told  journalist from Africa countries via video conference from Addis Ababa that President Banda was considering borrowing from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development(IRBD) window is done through grants and soft loans.

Zambia currently accesses funding for infrastructural projects from the World Bank through the IDA window. President Banda told Zoellick during a meeting on the sidelines of the African Union (AU) meeting in the Ethiopian Capital that roads leading to mining zones were frequently being damaged due to the intensity of mining activities. Mr. Zoellick said one of the things discussed with President Banda was how we can use IRBD financing which unlike IDA which are grants, it has interest rates but the rates are pretty low to about three to three and half percent. He said the World Bank would allow Zambia to borrow from IBRD window provided the projects to be financed demonstrated direct economic return to be able to use that financing route.

Zoellick said although Zambia’s economy had performed relatively well by registering growth in the midst of the global economic recession, there was need to diversify the economy from meno dependence on copper to other priority areas like agriculture.

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