The Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) issued Thursday its annual bulletin on cooperative activity in the agriculture sector for the fiscal year (FY) of 2014/2015.
According to CAPMAS, the number of cooperative agriculture associations increased by 0.2% from 5,786 in FY 2013/2014 to 5,795 in FY 2015/2016. The number of the members in these associations reached 4.8 million in FY 2014/2015—a 2.7% decrease from 4.7 million members in FY 2013/2014.
Loans (short, medium, and long-term) amounted to EGP 11.1bn in FY 2014/2015—a 23.8% increase for the sector from EGP 9bn in FY 2013/2014, CAPMAS said.
Short-term loans in particular reached EGP 7.4bn in comparison to EGP 5.4bn in FY 2013/2014—a 36.6% increase, according to CAPMAS.
CAPMAS explained that the reasons behind this increase have been described as “enablers” for investors (farmers) to settle their debts—the upper limit of such loans were doubled, as were new short-term loans for livestock in the national project for veal.
Additionally, CAPMAS said that the total medium-term loans rose to EGP 3.2bn in FY 2014/2015, a 5.6% increase from EGP 3bn in FY 2013/2014. Long-term loans were the only factor to decrease: from EGP 540m in FY 2013/2014 down to EGP 516m in FY 2014/2015—a 4.4% decrease.
