In a move to bol­ster fi­nan­cial sup­port for small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SMEs) in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor, Re­pub­lic Bank has launched of a new agribusi­ness loan prod­uct with a to­tal com­mit­ment of TT$50 mil­lion.

The bank ex­plained the in­tro­duc­tion of this prod­uct aims to ad­dress the un­der­served na­ture of the agribusi­ness ecosys­tem, whilst ac­knowl­edg­ing the piv­otal role of the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor in en­sur­ing food sus­tain­abil­i­ty in the re­gion.

It not­ed this fur­ther un­der­scored Re­pub­lic Bank’s com­mit­ment to sup­port Cari­com in achiev­ing food se­cu­ri­ty and al­so aligned with the bank's ear­li­er pledge in March 2022 to ded­i­cate US$100 mil­lion to­wards this ef­fort.

Open to new and ex­ist­ing cus­tomers of the bank with a min­i­mum of two years’ ex­pe­ri­ence in the agribusi­ness sec­tor, the loan is ac­ces­si­ble to SMEs in­volved in var­i­ous seg­ments of the agri­cul­ture sec­tor, in­clud­ing pre-pro­duc­tion in­puts, pri­ma­ry pro­duc­tion, agri-pro­cess­ing, and mar­ket­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion ser­vices.

Be­fore the launch of this loan prod­uct, the bank has been spon­sor­ing through its Pow­er to Make a Dif­fer­ence cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty pro­gramme, tech­ni­cal and ad­vi­so­ry train­ing, which of­fers ex­pert ad­vice to busi­ness­es on re­duc­ing pro­duc­tion costs, in­creas­ing yields, im­prov­ing cash flow re­li­a­bil­i­ty and fa­cil­i­tat­ing the pro­gres­sive scal­ing up of their op­er­a­tions.

Speak­ing about the ini­tia­tive, Vic Sal­ick­ram, vice-pres­i­dent at Re­pub­lic Bank said, "We are tru­ly pleased to in­tro­duce this spe­cialised agribusi­ness loan prod­uct to sup­port SMEs in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor. We be­lieve that by pro­vid­ing fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance and ex­pert guid­ance, we can em­pow­er busi­ness­es to thrive, con­tribute to food sus­tain­abil­i­ty, and fos­ter eco­nom­ic growth in the re­gion."

He added the de­vel­op­ment of this loan prod­uct stemmed from on­go­ing en­gage­ment with cus­tomers in­volved in the agribusi­ness sec­tor, whether through the bank's cen­tre for busi­ness in­no­va­tion or its part­ner­ships with the In­ter­Amer­i­can In­sti­tute for Co­op­er­a­tion on Agri­cul­ture and the MAR­VISTA In­sti­tute for Agri­cul­tur­al Train­ing and De­vel­op­ment (MI­ATD) where the bank con­tin­ues to pro­vide farm­ers through­out T&T with the tools and tech­niques to be­come more re­silient in the face of cli­mate change."

In­ter­est­ed ap­pli­cants may vis­it any of Re­pub­lic Bank’s 38 branch­es na­tion­wide.