But, the Prime Minister says while environmental factors are affecting the cane industry, the cost of financing to farmers is also a big drag on their earnings. He explained how excess liquidity in the banking system could be put to good use:
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"There's a lot of liquidity in the system. And so one of the challenges that our farmers they have is the issue of, of of financing. They get these one year financing loans from, from the banks and the interest rates are as much as 14%. So, you know, they're gouging them. And so and so every year they have to go and renew and renew. And so like, you know, when you are running just to stay on the same spot and sometimes even go backwards."
"One idea that we're looking at is that if we could provide the financing. The idea we're thinking about is maybe we could use this excess financing, finance, liquidity, pass it on to DFC, then DFC could go to the farmer, the farmer could go to DFC and say, OK, I owe $10,000. Okay. We will pay off the 10,000 maybe give you another 5,000 to be able to rebuild but then give you maybe 3 or 4 years at a lower interest rate. So then you give them breathing space to be able to continue to rebuild their, their cane fields."
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