The Rural Credit Working Group of the OCB (Organization of Brazilian Cooperatives) presented the proposals of the cooperatives to the Agricultural and Livestock Plan (PAP) of the 2018/19 crop to the director of the Department of Credit and Economic Studies of the Ministry of Agriculture’s Ministry of Agriculture Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (MPLS), Wilson Vaz de Araújo, on Monday afternoon (12), during a meeting held at the headquarters of Sistema Ocepar, in Curitiba (PR). In the morning, says the Paraná Cooperative Report, Vaz de Araújo participated in the board meeting of Ocepar, when he also dealt with the PAP.
According to the coordinator of the agricultural sector of OCB, Paulo César Dias, the meeting was very productive. “The evaluation is always very positive, since we have the Ministry of Agriculture as an agricultural policy-making body that defines the directives of action within the design that the government really wants to do for the 2018/19 harvest. What we did here today was to feel the position of the government, where we can walk more easily, while noting the important adjustments that are necessary and which are a priority so that we can increasingly leverage cooperatives and cooperated in this dynamic of rural credit in Brazil, “he said.
According to him, during the meeting with the Director of the MPLS, the cooperatives have defined ten priority points so that they can be negotiated with the federal government, with the support of the Ministry of Agriculture. These are basically related to interest rates, lines of credit for cooperatives (financing, marketing and investment) and rural insurance. For Dias, there is a possibility of several advances in the PAP of this crop compared to the plan of the previous cycle.
“I believe there is room to reduce the financial cost of operations and the interest rate should actually fall. There are some operational obstacles that have been placed in the regulations, especially in limitation conditioning, in the categorization of producers, some issues that have been passed on as the responsibility of cooperatives but which in fact are not. So we must strive for things to move within the sphere of government in a more transparent way, especially in this item linked to responsibility. There are several other issues related to the limits of some projects that are already lagging behind and there is always a very great pre-disposition on the part of the cooperatives, but in some programs we are really limited with this perspective, “he said. “There is also a condition that has been incorporated in the last harvest of direct negotiation between the producer, the cooperative and the financial agent. Now we are strengthening the lawsuits, providing for the maintenance of this policy, and the cooperative is able to maintain the negotiating position with the financial agent, “he added.
Dias also informed that the representatives of the cooperativism await the analysis of the proposals sent by the sector. “The Ministry of Agriculture will internalize all the lawsuits presented here and, together with the Secretary of Agricultural Policy and the Minister himself, will give the appropriate referrals and we will be called in turn to corroborate this position, both from a practical and technical point of view political, “he concluded.