RAMALLAH, West Bank — After three years of planning, the Palestinian Agricultural Credit Institution (PACI) will begin accepting loan applications to support farmers by the end of the year, its director says, now that the government has approved funding and completed all the necessary logistical and legal arrangements. Some farmers, however, remain skeptical.
Palestinian farmers have been calling for such an organization for sometime to get around private lending institutions exploiting their need for money to impose high interest rates. The farmers are nonetheless concerned that there could be further delays in the PACI getting up and running, as has been the case with the Palestinian Agricultural Disaster Risk Reduction and Insurance Fund, which was approved in 2013 but is yet to start operations. The latter, whose mandate is to compensate farmers for losses resulting from natural disasters and the Israeli occupation, has not finalized procedures related to the funding of programs it hopes to implement and has no funding for its own operations.
