The Chairperson of ICMSA Farm Business Committee has welcomed the joint announcement by Ministers Humphries, Creed and Donohue of the Brexit Loan Scheme but he went on to note the almost complete lack of specifics and real details around the farmer ‘element’ of this scheme.
Shane O’Loughlin said that the lack of clarity on the loan package was being compounded by the original SME Brexit Loan scheme (which excluded primary agri producers) being the only information available on the SCBI website.
Lack Of Details
“If a farmer wants to consider applying, there is no obvious procedure to which he or she can refer or follow”, he said.
“Farmers are daily making their projections and financial plans in terms of investment and the ICMSA doesn’t think that it was unreasonable to ask the Government to provide relevant information on the actual announcement of the scheme and there have been two years to sort this out.”
O’Loughlin suggested that the minimum requirement of €50,000 will “be in excess of many requirements”, and recommended lowering the cut-off point at €20,000.
“We’d also be very disappointed at the decision to permit an interest rate of 4.5% given that the previous scheme had money available at 2.95% – a rate that is itself higher than would ordinarily be charged in similar circumstances in other European states,” O’Loughlin concluded.
© 2019 Checkout – your source for the latest Irish retail news. Article by Aidan O’Sullivan. Click sign-up to subscribe to Checkout.
