Management of the Kintampo Rural Bank in the Bono Region have pledged commitment to use the Warehouse Receipt System (WRS) platform to grant more loans to smallholder farmers to increase their agricultural activities.
A statement issued by the IFC’s WRS Project Team and copied to the Ghana News Agency said officials of the Kintampo Rural Bank including Mr Martin Mensah, the Chief Executive Officer, said the Ghana WRS project being implemented by the IFC World Bank Group presented real opportunities for them to increase lending to smallholder farmers to enable them to increase production.
It said the partnership with the project stakeholders provided a solid foundation for a better future for the farmers.
“We want to grant credit, but farmers do not have the matching collateral, but with this less risky arrangement we are going to increase our agricultural portfolio to support both commercial and smallholder farmers”, he explained in an interview.
It noted that at the end of a WRS training session organized by the IFC project team in Kintampo, Mr Samuel Owusu, the Credit Officer in charge of the Kintampo Branch, also observed that the project initiative was helping them to eliminate the major barriers to lending to agricultural businesses.
“Once the concerns of farmers’ collateral are addressed through this initiative, we are ready to grant more loans to farmers”, he stated.
With financial support from Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), the IFC Ghana WRS project is being implemented in nine regions in the grains value chain of the country.
It is a technical assistance and advisory services project aimed at setting up a well-functioning and regulated WRS that is expected to facilitate increased access to credit to farmers and the supply chain, access to structured markets and professional warehousing to reduce post-harvest storage losses.
This intervention focuses on supporting a well-functioning WRS for the successful operations of the Ghana Commodity Exchange (GCX).
The project addresses WRS on a policy and regulatory level, and system level, including technical advisory, training, capacity building and awareness raising for various stakeholders in the public and private sectors.
IFC-a sister organization of the World Bank and member of the World Bank Group is the largest global development institution focused on the private sector in emerging markets.
It also works with more than 2,000 businesses worldwide, using capital, expertise, and influence to create markets and opportunities in the toughest areas of the world.
In the fiscal year 2018, IFC delivered more than $23 billion in long-term financing for developing countries.
