THE EDITOR, Sir:
SENATOR NORMAN Grant and his team at The Jamaica Agricultural Society have been busy publicising the Build Jamaica, Buy Jamaica campaign, and justifiably so.
If someone did not revitalise this idea we could have found ourselves in the medium to long term importing all foodstuff and being totally dependent on foreign food imports to the demise of our local farmers.
But Senator Grant needs to take a bolder step and ensure stability and revolutionise agricultural funding support in order to make our small farmers globally competitive.
Credit cards are popular in industrialised countries and becoming more commonly used by the urban, middle and upper classes of developing countries. In the rural areas of developing countries, however, they are less common because of the greater seasonality in income flows and the higher rates of poverty.
In Latin America there has been introduced a rural credit card, targeting agricultural input suppliers and farmers. The promise of this product is that it can dramatically reduce transaction costs for clients and merchants accepting the card.
The principal findings are that the credit card is a viable and profitable product; that a culture of innovation is critical to sustain and refine the product; and that infrastructural and legal obstacles present in the country require creative
solutions.
This credit card product that has been pioneered in Latin America for rural farmers could be established in Jamaica if certain conditions hold, namely:
A density of rural clients with variable but predictable cash flows
A minimum level of functioning physical infrastructure (telecommunications, electricity, postal services and roads)
An appropriate legal and financial regulatory infrastructure that permits profitable intermediation
A profit-oriented, client-driven service provider with a history of active participation in the rural sector.
If we are serious about empowering farmers to be globally competitive in Jamaica, then a serious look at the agricultural credit card revolution is a must.
I am, etc.,
PETER JONES
Exec Director of the Economics
Development Institute
liontraders@yahoo.com
Kingston
