Africa-Press – Zimbabwe. Farmers who defaulted repaying their Command Agriculture loans can repay them in three years, reports The Herald.
The farmers will repay the loans in three instalments for the next three seasons. This was revealed by CBZ Agro-Yield managing director, Mr Walter Chigodora whilst giving oral evidence before Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Lands, Agriculture Fisheries Water, and Rural Resettlement.
Chigodora was responding to the committee’s question on what CBZ was doing to farmers who had defaulted on repaying their Command Agriculture loans due to drought and the covid-19 pandemic. The committee had also asked if Government had assumed the debts on behalf of the defaulting farmers.
Chigodora said:
We have restructured the debt to run for three years so the loan will now have to be repaid in three years. So we are dividing the debt into three (seasons) and doing this will also ensure that we do not create a burden to Treasury. Besides drought there was also Covid-19 which created further problems, so we are working well with farmers.
Explaining how the debt will be repaid, Chigodora said CBZ will submit a stop order facility to the Grain Marketing Board to debit their money from the farmers’ sales.
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