Farmers asked to be patient

Press, 29 May 1981, Page 20

Farmers asked to be patient

The Rural Bank has more applications from farmers requesting finance, at the present time than it is able to process within the usual time span Stating this recently, the bank's general manager, Mr Ted Babe, said he hoped farmers would he patient and realise the bank's difficulties in processing the applications it had received during the past few months. Mr Babe said the main reason for the abnormally large number of application's was that the highly successful land development encouragement loan scheme had closed on March 31. "Many farmers wishing to take advantage, of this scheme before its closing date have placed a strain on the bank's ability to process all applications as quickly as in the past." he. said. Coupled with the land development encouragement loan scheme was the unusually high number of farmers requesting assistance under other lending policies of the bank, he said.

"We hope to clear the backlog as soon as possible, but in the meantime wc must ask farmers to be patient if they are faced with delay in having their applications concluded," said Mr Babe. The situation in Canterbury is similar to that elsewhere. The district appraiser of the bank in Christchurch, Mr S. M. Wright, said that the number of applications for bank finance now in hand in the province would be about twice the figure at this time last year, which was about 80 per cent up on the previous year. While this included addi- . tional applications engendered by the closing'ef applications for the land development encouragement' loan scheme at the end of March, there, was also a general high ' demand for corporation lending assistance and applications were still coming to hand. Mr Wright said there was ; quite a fairly steady general ; inquiry about loan assistance resulting from the drought in the province. J At the annual conference i of the meat and wool section i of North Canterbury I Federated Farmers last 1 [ week there was some feeling i that drought relief measures. I apart from Rural Bank loan • assistance, should be rcin- ’ stated.

One view was that even if the old system had been rough justice in some respects, it had helped people in trouble to retain their capital stock and people in trouble did not want to front up to the Rural Bank for another loan. Mr G. L. B. Burnett (Oxford) said he would like to see a scheme based on stock units, where an area was declared for drought relief.