In the middle of the Agricultural Show, this is a step forward in favor of farmers in difficulty, recognized as such by the State. The latter will be able to delay the payment of their bank debt for one year, reschedule their maturities and benefit from loans at preferential rates, announced this Tuesday, February 27, the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire.
At the end of a meeting with the banking sector, the minister spoke to journalists about “the possibility for these farms in difficulty to have a one-year deferral of payment of their debt”, then a rescheduling of the debt of up to three years. Farms in great difficulty, for their part, will also be able to benefit from emergency loans at preferential rates, “between 0 and 2.5% depending on the situation of the farms”, he added.
“Immediate and concrete responses”
Some banks have already started to offer advantageous loans to farmers, and have not held back from communicating about these commercial initiatives on the sidelines of the Agricultural Show. Bruno Le Maire also said that he wanted to let competition play out between financial establishments.
The Minister of the Economy said he wanted to “provide immediate solutions to the agricultural companies most in difficulty, those which have real cash flow needs and which are now calling for help, and which need to be provided with answers immediate and concrete.
To assess needs, advisors dedicated to businesses in difficulty in each department will “look at the cash flow situation of each agricultural operation”. They will begin this census “in the coming hours” in order to “define the farms really in difficulty”, he said.
“Simple, fast and effective”
Any operator who considers himself short of funds must report to these advisors in each prefecture. “Then a dialogue begins with his bank advisor, his bank agency, to have one of the two instruments available to him”, rescheduling or advantageous loan, according to the minister.
“Let’s avoid complexities, scales, references,” launched Bruno Le Maire. “The situation in Gers will not be the same as the situation in Brittany, Alsace or the north of France. […] It has to be simple, quick and efficient.”
For his part, the president of the French Banking Federation (FBF) Nicolas Namias promised “the most personalized dialogue with (the) farmer clients”. “All our advisors dedicated to agriculture are today available and in dialogue with our farmer clients,” he insisted.
State loans advanced to May
Bruno Le Maire also indicated that the State guarantee of loans to farmers, to the tune of two billion euros, would be put in place from May 1 and not during July, as initially planned. These loans – the average amount of which should be around 150,000 euros, according to Bercy – are aimed at “other agricultural businesses, which need to adapt, need to buy equipment, invest, need green their operations and therefore have very significant investment needs”, specified the Minister of the Economy.
“The challenge is fundamentally to limit the guarantees requested from our farmer customers and to mobilize other types of guarantees provided in particular by the public authorities,” commented Nicolas Namias. Also present in Bercy, the general director of Crédit Agricole Philippe Brassac praised “an agriculture in France which overall is dynamic, has a future, is developing”. “I would not like through these measures to send the message that agriculture is in structural difficulty,” he argued.
Asked about the commitments made by insurers, Bruno Le Maire promised a meeting with their representatives “as early as next week”. “There are a lot of issues, in particular the issue of global warming,” he noted while the crop insurance subscription campaign is slipping according to professionals in the sector interviewed by AFP.