Loans with 1% interest with terms of 30 years for the agricultural sector under the Project to Incentive Investment in Agriculture (FIA), delivered by BanEcuador through the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAG), would be paralyzed until the update.

At the same time, according to the official letter MAG-MAG-2023-0702-OF, addressed to the Director General of BanEcuador, Wiliam Chiang, on June 28, the head of MAG, Eduardo Izaguirre, assured that this update “is subject to an increase in the budget ceiling In the letter, Izaguirre also informed that the Ministry of Economy and Finance was requested to increase the upper limit of the budget for the FIA ​​project on June 26.

In loans at a rate of 1%, 220 million dollars have already been given, and BanEcuador plans to place 250 million dollars in 2023.

The Minister confirmed that “once they receive the approvals of the budget reforms, they will communicate officially to update the agreement that MAG has with BanEcuador.” He also reminded that producers in this type of loan benefit from a subsidy of 15 percent of the interest rate.

However, the head of the portfolio for economy and finance, Pablo Arosemena, completely ruled out an increase in that ceiling. He did so this Wednesday afternoon, July 5, during a radio interview, in which he mentioned that more than $200 million in 1×30 loans have already been delivered from the various government portfolios that provide it.

“They are talking about increasing the budget, increasing the ceiling, which means: hey, give me more, they are asking for an increase in their ceiling because they have spent the part that was given for it in the budget, they are asking for more,” explained Arosemena.

The last official announcement by MAG on the delivery of this type of loan was on June 14 in Loja, when BanEcuador delivered eight loans of $20,400 each in 1% loans for a period of 30 years for the improvement of agricultural production. According to information from MAG, in that province the Government granted 4,211 loans worth 11.1 million dollars, and at the national level more than 65 thousand producers benefited from 182.9 million dollars.

Mauricio Salem: It would be irresponsible for us to give $200 million from BanEcuador due to threat or pressure

However, the initial promise of the regime for this type of credit was to provide 1,000 million dollars in four years of the mandate, which was cut in half by the death of the cross, but did not even reach half of the target figure.

Arosemena indicated that MAG has a budget of $144 million and indicated that MAG must reallocate its resources to reactivate the 1×30 credits.

“If this is a priority project, as it is, they have to redistribute their resources internally, no one will allow them to do that, they have to do it, that’s their task, redistribute, remove it from another less priority project and put it in that highest priority” , said Arosemena, who pointed out that “giving more funds to a subject would mathematically mean taking away from another subject, because we are in a deficit, it is not a surplus”.

He assured that MAG can redistribute and thus reactivate the delivery of those credits. “They can do it immediately, they have $144 million in the budget and the value of the subsidy is a lower value, so they can do an incremental amount, that’s an internal issue,” Arosemena concluded.