Caritas sets up bank to help farmers

A local Roman Catholic NGO, Caritas Centrafrique, has opened a bank to make loans to farmers in the southwestern Central African Republican (CAR) province of Lobaye to help them attain food self-sufficiency. The secretary-general of the local Caritas chapter, the Rev Alphonse Kossi, told IRIN on Monday that farmers had been receiving loans since April. He said that a farmer could receive up to 100,000 francs CFA (US $166) while a cooperative could get up to 500,000 francs ($833). So far, he said, 500 farmers had been able to buy groundnut and rice seeds with these loans. International Partnership for Human Development, a US-based NGO, funds Caritas’ projects. A representative of the US-based NGO, Christian Balan, told IRIN on Tuesday that it had disbursed $200,000 for the farmers’ bank. He said that in addition to the bank, Caritas had established a $62,000 scheme to collect and buy farmers’ crops at 10 percent higher than market prices and resell them to the farmers at 30 percent lower during periods of hardship. "The structure will enable farmers to have food in hard times and during the planting season,"he said. The project, he said, would end the unjust practice whereby traders buy crops at lower prices and later sell them to the same farmers for huge profits. Balan added that the same project was about to be implemented in the towns of Berberati, Kaga Bandoro and Bambari (respectively 186 km west, 342 km north, and 385 km northeast of Bangui). Apart from the farmers’ projects, US-based NGO has a fund to help 8,000 HIV-infected and affected people. Balan said that 700 mt of food, of which 80 percent was already in Bangui, would be distributed during 12 months. Roman Catholic dioceses had, he said, already identified the beneficiaries, who in a month should receive their first food rations of rice, oil, beans and soya-maize flour. "We are examining together with the government how best and when these funds may be used," he said.