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Only one bank is accepting Future Growth Loan Scheme applications from farmers, despite the scheme being launched over three months ago.
The Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland (SBCI) has stated since the launch of the scheme in April that other banks “will make announcements shortly”, but Bank of Ireland is the only bank currently accepting applications.
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Farmers must seek pre-approval for loans with the SBCI before applying for the scheme, but the Irish Farmers Journal has learned that there is a six-month limit to this pre-approval.
This means that farmers who are pre-approved now and wish to bank with a lender other than Bank of Ireland will have to go through the pre-approval stage again.
Some 318 farmers had submitted applications by the end of June.
AIB, Ulster Bank and KBC are all approved lenders, but when contacted by this newspaper neither Ulster Bank nor KBC could confirm specific launch dates. AIB confirmed it would be accepting loan applications later in the year.
“We’re currently in design phase with the product so we hope to have it in place by quarter four in October or November,” Tadhg Buckley, head of agriculture with AIB told the Irish Farmers Journal.
The scheme offers loans of €50,000 up to €3m to farmers at rates of up to 4.5%. However, the scheme has been dogged by delays since its announcement almost two years ago in Budget 2018, with the 2018 launch date pushed to April 2019.
The Irish Farmers Journal understands that at the time of launching in April this year, a number of banks were unhappy with a delay in receiving specific details on the scheme.
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