People of Mauro village in the Tabare local level government (LLG) who are mostly members of the Mauro Integrated Farmers’ Cooperative Society (MIFCS) received training on budgeting, cash flow and account opening.

FPDA financial literacy officer Mcmillan David delivered the training in early July, assisted by fellow technical officers John Gahekave and Mike John.

On Friday (July 12), MiBank Kundiawa branch officers Moses John and Emma Alison assisted the participants to open accounts and received their Hibiscus and MiCash cards on the same day.

MIFCS chairman Langer Bal thanked FPDA for delivering a vital training that instilled savings mentality for the members.

“Through this training, our farmers have learnt to save their hard earned cash and manage their money wisely. We thank FPDA and MiBank for their collaboration in bringing banking services to our doorstep. 

“We will ensure all 111 registered members in our group have accounts with MiBank. MiBank offers good customer services with better terms and conditions that suits the needs of our village farmers,” Mr. Bal said.

He reiterated that the group usually supply their fresh produce to Simbu Farmers Marketing Limited (SFML) in Kundiawa.

“Now that SFML had an arrangement with MiBank, whatever produce our farmers supply, SFML will make the payments directly into their MiBank accounts. They can check their balance through mobile banking.

“We are now looking at moving into commercial farming by running our farm operations like a business. We’re living in the 21st century and want to move away from subsistence farming practices. We appeal to our district and provincial authorities to assist farmers with machinery so that we engage in mechanized farming.

“We need to adapt to advanced farming systems in order to encourage downstream processing in agriculture.

“Our government in Chimbu must start to invest in mechanized and modern farming techniques to ensure local farmers compete to address food security, nutrition and other challenges facing our province and the country as a whole,” Mr. Bal stressed.