Pangantucan, BUKIDNON─The move of the Department of Agriculture(DA) to a shift from support programs focus on production to support programs for easy and low-interest financing has started.

As the training and extension arm of the DA, the Agricultural Training Institute (ATI) thru its centers is currently conducting series of Financial Literacy Training to the farmers of the 15 initially identified provinces all over the Philippines.

The Agricultural Training Institute- Regional Training Center 10 (ATI-RTC 10) conducted its first batch of the Training on Financial Literacy on August 7-8, 2018 at Pangantucan, Bukidnon. It was participated by 68 farmers from the different barangay of Pangatucan in the province of Bukidnon who have responded to the invitation of the LGU.

This is part of the easy-access loan program of the DA which was initially launched and pilot tested on May 2017 in Surigao del Norte and Nueva Ecija through the Agricultural Credit Policy Council ( ACPC) Production Loan Easy Access ( PLEA). Initially, the PLEA program was targeted to cover 15 provinces – one in Luzon, four in Visayas, and 10 in Mindanao.

There will be three more batches of this training to be conducted in Bukidnon, two of which would be in Valencia and one in Malaybalay City.

As ATI will be conducting a total of 341 trainings from the priority areas identified by ACPC in 2018 (from the reports of Moisa Nina Catiil) .