THE Provincial Veterinary Office (PVO) is upbeat that a loan program of the Department of Agriculture (DA), through the Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP), would help boost animal raisers in Negros Occidental.
LBP-Bacolod personnel presented the agency's Agricultural Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (Acef) program during the monthly meeting of Alliance Hog Raisers Association of Negros Occidental (Ahrano) at Koica Training Center in Bacolod City on Tuesday, May 7.
Provincial Veterinarian Renante Decena said the loan program being offered is in support to the sustainable growth of PVO-organized and assisted animal raiser associations and organizations.
Decena said 28 Ahrano member-associations expressed interests to avail themselves of the program.
"This will boost our local animal raisers particularly in terms of livelihood and income generation opportunities," he said, adding that "for us in the government, it will complement to our measures on improving agricultural productivity."
The Acef program aims to increase productivity of animal raisers by providing the necessary credit opportunity to them, their cooperatives and associations, and micro and small scale enterprises.
The program will enable qualified individual animal raisers to acquire loan of up to P1 million for the establishment of production facilities and other farm inputs.
PVO, for its part, committed to provide technical assistance to all interested animal raisers.
"We will help them in the preparation of their business or farm development plan proposals and budget," Decena said, adding that through this, raisers are able to easily avail themselves of the loan program.