Rural Bank given targets

Press, 9 August 1985, Page 2

Rural Bank given targets

Wellington reporter The Rural Bank has been asked by the Government to give special consideration to three groups of farmers financed by the bank. This follows up an examination by the Government of the case made by Federated Farmers for transitional help to some farmers during the present period of economic restructuring. The Minister of Agriculture, Mr Moyle, said the three groups were: First, farmers settled by the Rural Bank in the five years to November. 1984, and who were facing financial hardship. Second, “special settlement" farmers unable to meet their financial commitments.

Third, those farmers who had done extensive development in the last five years before November, 1984, and who were facing financial hardship as a result of recent bad weather. He said these measures had been foreshadowed recently by the Prime Minister. Mr Lange, and himself at the annual conference of Federated Farmers in Wellington. The Rural Bank would examine the financial situation of individual farmers, and would have the freedom to freeze interest rates for up to three years where the farmer was considered to have a viable, long-term future. Interest rates frozen under these short-term arrangements would begin to rise again after mid-1988, until the Rural Bank’s indicator rate was reached, Mr Moyle said. Specific details as to what the Rural Bank could do would be available to the groups concerned from branches of the Rural Bank. This assistance was targeted to specific groups of farmers suffering financial hardship, who showed good prospects of being viable in the longer term, but who needed help during the process of adjustment in response to the Government’s economic strategy, he said.