Bank considers calls for more ‘imaginative’ agri loan facilities

AIB is giving serious consideration to a finance industry call for “more imaginative” loan structures — such as back-loaded repayments on long-term loans — to drive agri-food growth.

Speaking at an AIB agri-business breakfast briefing primarily attended by accountants and agri-finance experts in the Rochestown Park Hotel, Cork, agricultural consultant Jonathan Anthony of Anthony & Associates in Cork, said that Ireland’s pillar banks should offer farmers and SMEs a seven-year loan with interest-only repayments for the first three or four years.

Mr Anthony said: “Banks need to be more imaginative in how they structure loan facilities, especially for dairy farmers looking to expand. With bio-security being such an issue, people want to breed from within their own stock rather than risk importing any diseases.