The national government announced this Sunday thatwill allocate $500 million in credits at a subsidized rate to assist producers in Corrientes affected by the fires, while working with multilateral financial organizations to activate lines of attention to disaster situations, which allow collaboration in an agile way with the regions involved.
The announcements were led by the Ministers of Productive Development, Matías Kulfas, and of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Julián Domínguez, in addition to the Deputy Chief of Staff, Jorge Neme, who were present in person and virtually in Corrientes, to learn about the crisis affecting its producers.
According to estimates from the different productive sectors of the province, the economic damage has already exceeded $25,000 million in the yerba mate, livestock, agricultural, wood and rice areas, among others.
“We are together to accompany all the men and women from Corrientes who are suffering this unprecedented crisis and generate solutions as soon as possible,” Kulfas stressed during the announcement of the financing line, this Sunday afternoon in the city of Mercedes, in the city of Corrientes. agricultural experimental station of the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA).
“We are together to accompany all the men and women from Corrientes who are suffering from this unprecedented crisis,” Kulfas said.
The line will have initial funding of $500 million from resources from the National Productive Development Fund (Fondep) -which will be expanded as necessary- and will have 100% guarantees from the Argentine Guarantee Fund (Fogar), which administers the Secretariat of Small and Medium Enterprises and Entrepreneurs of the Nation.
Likewise, the minister highlighted the “coordination with the Ministry of Production of the province of Corrientes, with the Bank of Corrientes and with the Minister of Agriculture of the Nation” and expressed the expectation that “this line will be, within this scourge so terrible, be a help to begin to recompose and get ahead”.
The credits can be requested through the Banco de Corrientes, they will have a rate of 0% during the first year subsidized by the Fondep, and will have a grace period of 12 months.
All available resources
For his part, Minister Domínguez affirmed that “President Alberto Fernández asked that all available resources be allocated to the service of the producer” and added: “I want to convey to the producers of the province that we are working in coordination with all the technical organizations such as INTA and Senasa and with the province of Corrientes”.
“We are doing the technical-operational work. We are going to make every effort so that through a common diagnosis between the Nation and the Province and the municipalities, together with the entities, we can have the best capacities at the service of the producer who is suffering this climate disaster,” Dominguez said.
For his part, Neme said that work is being done to “evaluate the different modes of intervention of the national State in the situation that the province is suffering” and that the national government has already made contact “with multilateral financial organizations, in particular with the Andean Corporation of Development, which has lines of credit in response to disaster situations and whose execution is very fast”.
“We are together to accompany all the men and women from Corrientes who are suffering from this unprecedented crisis and generate solutions as soon as possible.”
“We have a series of financial tools to deal with emergencies, many of them located in different multilateral banks that work in Argentina,” said the deputy chief of staff in relation to existing loan contracts with those entities, which include clauses that allow modalities of immediate disbursements in cases of emergency.
In the same sense, Neme said that “in the next few days” measures will be adopted such as the National Livestock Emergency Declaration Decree and the specific evaluations of a master plan to know where the investments are going to be made, what type of investments and whether they will be to rebuild public infrastructure works or directly to assist the affected producers.
Losses already exceed $25,000 million in the yerba mate, livestock, agricultural, timber and rice areas
“We are anticipating that before a Declaration of National Livestock Emergency it will also be extended to other provinces that are very committed to it. They are, in general, those of the Argentine Northwest: Formosa, Chaco, Entre Ríos, Santa Fe and Misiones,” he advanced.
Although he understood that no other province has the dimension of the Corrientes disaster, Neme assured that “in a few days there will be very specific news on the forms of immediate assistance that the national State will provide.”
Beyond the next announcements, the province of Corrientes received an Advance from the National Treasury, a special emergency financing from the Ministry of Agriculture, assistance from the National Fund for Productive Development was also arranged this Sunday and another Advance from the National Treasury is in process .
“The national State -he assured- is moving very quickly in assisting the government of the province of Corrientes”.
As for loans guaranteed by Fogar, those intended for working capital may be requested with a maximum amount of $6 million, for a term of up to 3 years, including the grace period, with a final rate of 0% during the first year and, during the rest of the term, 14.9%.
Meanwhile, the financing intended for investment, to rebuild the equipment and material necessary to produce, will be up to $10 million per loan and will have a term of up to 5 years, with a rate of 0% during the first year, 9.9% during the second and 22% the rest of the term.