PETROPAVLOVSK. KAZINFORM - In the North Kazakhstan region, many agricultural producers use preferential lending instruments. Thanks to financial support from the state, local farms are actively developing, mastering new production and expanding capacities, reports MIA Kazinform.

All this became possible thanks to the program of the Agrarian Credit Corporation “Agribusiness”, implemented within the framework of the agrarian policy of the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

The milk processing plant Rostan LLP has been producing butter, spreads, cheeses and cottage cheese since 1998. Today the enterprise produces 35 tons of dairy products per day. The company supplies its products to the shelves not only in the North Kazakhstan region, but also in other regions of the country. Half of the products are exported to Russia. The enterprise developed systematically, but larger-scale transformations required investment. Last year, thanks to funds from the Agricultural Credit Corporation, the plant expanded by opening a new workshop.

“To improve production technology, it was decided to install a mini-plant for milk processing. This plan was realized thanks to a loan from the Agrarian Credit Corporation in the amount of 120 million tenge: in November last year we launched a new whole-milk workshop, drinking milk, kefir and sour cream will be produced here,” said Svetlana Akhmetgaleeva, technologist at Rostan LLP.

In addition, the company used loan funds to purchase the latest equipment, which made it possible to produce pasteurized and ultra-pasteurized milk, as well as fermented milk products with different shelf life and degree of processing. Now, to produce a quality product, the company selects a supplier of raw materials. In the future, Rostan LLP intends to expand its range and find new sales channels.

The Agrarian Credit Corporation provides financial support in various areas. Among the entities financed by it are dairy farms. Preferential loans from 6% per annum and for a period of up to 12 years are used by both large industrial dairy complexes and family-type MTFs.

Among those who received government support in the form of a preferential loan for opening a dairy farm is the peasant farm “Gerdt V.V.” Using loan funds, 66 head of highly productive Holstein-Friesian dairy cattle from Ukraine were purchased here. They have already passed veterinary quarantine and have begun to bear offspring. Now there are 100 heads of cattle on the farm; up to 1,500 liters of milk are produced here every day.

“We built the farm in 2017. Dairy production is very profitable, and we decided to increase it. We borrowed 54 million tenge from the Agricultural Credit Corporation at 4% per annum. This is a very profitable bet. In the future, we plan to build another farm for 100 heads and increase the number of workers,” noted the head of the peasant farm, Vladimir Gerdt.

This year, in the North Kazakhstan region, with funding from the Agrarian Credit Corporation, 6 farms plan to implement projects to create or expand dairy complexes. Two of them are family MTFs.

“Preferential loans are provided by the corporation for construction and installation work, for the purchase of cattle and equipment. If necessary, loans are allocated for the purchase of equipment or procurement of feed. This year, the corporation financed 389 applications from agricultural entities in the region in the amount of over 22 billion tenge. Among them, 17.5 billion tenge were allocated for spring field and harvesting work,” emphasized Almat Kozhakhmetov, director of the North Kazakhstan branch of Agrarian Credit Corporation JSC.

In 2021, more than 71 billion tenge were allocated for the implementation of the Agribusiness lending program. More than half of these funds have already been allocated by the Agricultural Credit Corporation NMH "Baiterek" to finance the country's farmers.