The agricultural sector The Dominican Republic has great challenges to face in 2023, according to Osmar Benítez, executive president of the Dominican Agribusiness Board (JAD).
“A first challenge is the topic phytozoosanitary. We must make a permanent effort to preserve animal health and plant health in the Dominican Republic, because it is, today, the main limitation that we have in the international and national markets, because the markets become more demanding every day”, he said.
He said that the healthy productsinnocuous, without pests and diseases can impact the pocket of the farmer.
He understands that attention must be paid to the markets, because produce healthy food It must be to respond to a market demand.
“We must continue making efforts to bring the producer of consumerso that the price that the producer receives on the farm is similar or a small margin, to the price that the consumer is paying,” he said.
In third place, Benitez pointed out that another of the challenges of agricultural sector is to promote that small farmers, women and young people want to go more every day to integrate into the productive activity of the field.
In addition, he considered that it should promote associativity. “We have to promote the formation of cooperatives and organizations, and lastly, we want to insist on innovation,” he said.
He pointed out that it is necessary to adopt the new technologies that are coming to the field because they help lower production costs, reduce the need for foreign labor and allow progress with greater productivity by area.
Credit
“For all of the above, we need what is the fundamental instrument, which is credit. We must continue to expand credit basisit is necessary to continue expanding the incorporation of the private banking sector in credit support to the agricultural sector“, accurate.
The executive president of the JAD said that right now they have a strong portfolio, with very competitive ratesinclusive, with zero rate.
In it Agricultural bankhe added, it is necessary that the commercial Bank also get involved. “To motivate commercial banks, we have always preached the need to have a guarantee fund that can assure a bank the investment,” he said.
He explained that with the guarantee fund they are assured 50%, the producer assumes 25% and the bank that assumes the other 25%.” So that they can be channeled more resources for innovation, health, sow more and to market better.
