The Botswana Meat Commission (BMC) has in its bid to ensure that farmers are paid on time signed a revolving facility with two local commercial banks, Standard Chartered Bank Botswana (SCBB) and Atlas Mara’s BancABC.
Through the facility, the commission intends to speed up payment for farmers whose cattle have been delivered at its three plants, Lobatse, Francistown and Maun.
BMC Public Relations Officer, Brian Dioka said the new facility will ensure that farmers get paid for the cattle they have delivered at any of their three plants in the stipulated 14 days.
The Lobatse plant has been for years funding Francistown and Maun plants, thus creating cash-flow scarcities to manage all the three (3) plants efficiently. This in turn exposed cattle producers/farmers and other material suppliers to delays in honoring their payments within proposed timelines.
“BMC cash flow inabilities are necessitated by the historical over-reliance on the Lobatse plant by both the Francistown and Maun plants which have made us to approach a financier for a product which would be suitable to lessen this over-dependency”, Dioka said.
It is expected that farmers who bank with BancABC for the Francistown bound cattle suppliers will use ATM cash-cards that attract NO account-management charges/fees
Whilst those using BancABC for Maun plant bound cattle suppliers will use varied payment methods such as EFT’s and bank cheques.