Peru is a leader in microfinance, but this reality is not yet felt in the agricultural and livestock sectors of different parts of the country.
Although it is true that some municipal savings banks (CMAC), non-governmental development organizations, Small Business Development Entities (Edpyme), finance companies, special cooperatives and rural savings banks are already working in these sectors, even the development revolution has not has reached the field.
Perhaps, the rural savings banks, Banco de la Nación, Agrobanco and some CMACs are working in these areas, but there is so much to do that the efforts are hardly noticeable. It is the beginning of a long way to go, to invest and to work in a coordinated way between the institutions that operate in these sectors.
However, there are still serious problems to solve. Among them are the lack of infrastructure, the very serious management of the risks that limit rural financial activities and the environment where these finances move, which are not always willing to continue supporting agriculture. Those are some limitations that the sector has.
There is also an urgent need for concerted actions among government institutions that are working in this area such as Agrobanco, Banco de la Nación and Cofide, organizations that are striving to do their best, but each one works on its own, when they can do it coordinated.
Likewise, the government should generate public policy schemes to efficiently support agriculture. These should be discussed with representatives of the financial sector to see how they can collaborate with public policies that are sustained over time and that in turn allow the development of the financial system, especially those who support small commercial agriculture.
It is that in reality, rural finance is not something simple. The rural is a broad concept and it is not clear which placements or deposits are related to the rural. From this perspective, agricultural placements, which are an important part of rural placements, must be developed in every sense of the word. What is found is that there are interesting expansions, but they are not enough.
However, we salute the institutions that are or are just recently involved in rural microfinance. A revolution is urgent in the countryside, not in the style of the old Chinese leader Mao Tse Tung, but yes as President Luiz Ignacio "Lula" Da Silva is doing it in Brazil.
Although it is true that agricultural placements in the formal system have been growing in recent years, especially placements in agriculture related to small agriculture, they are still far from what is expected to boost agriculture.
This growth seems to respond more to the trend of the system than to a policy of expansion of agricultural financing, where the agricultural representative represents only 3 percent of the total loans of the financial system. However, this growth is concentrated in small agriculture that has low delinquency levels, but even so, there are more than 115,000 clients served by microfinance institutions.
Is it that agriculture is not profitable? The sack and tie bureaucrats in Lima often say, but the experience of the CMACs, Banco de la Nación and Agrobanco say just the opposite.
