Philippines offers soft loans to farmers

MANILA, Philippines (Xinhua) - The Land Bank of the Philippines has announced the offer of coffee production loans at the interest rate of 9.5 percent to farmers.

In a continuing effort since 2010, the Philippine Coffee Board Inc. and the Peace and Equity Foundation have also been offering P100 million ($2.26 million) in soft Loans to coffee farmers, but few have availed.

"The more we need to arm our coffee farmers with all the help they need. We're just producing about a fifth of our total consumption. If we cannot compete in terms of volume, we might as well compete in terms of quality," said Philippine Coffee Board, Inc. Chairman Nicholas Matti.

He said Philippine coffee production in 2015 will decline to 20, 000 tons, from 22,000 tons in 2014, largely due to climate conditions.

The Philippines imports 80,000 tons of coffee from larger coffee-producing countries such as Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Colombia and Brazil, with local consumption increasing to as much as 5 percent a year.