La Trinidad, Benguet – The Benguet Agri-Pinoy Trading Center (BAPTC) continues to move forward its vision to empower farmers and offer quality and safe agricultural products to consumers.
Frederick Edeco, Contract Trading Department managing director, said that since the last quarter of 2016, the open trading operation of the center had a ‘no-zero record’ trading daily, which means that the center had been continually trading vegetables from farmers to buyers.
On the other hand, the accredited members of the trading center had been increasing from the different stakeholders: individual and group farmers, buyer/sellers’ groups, inter-traders’ groups, packers’ groups, market facilitators and individual buyers.
Joaquin Geromino Depalog, Farmers’ Leader Council chairman, also officially sat as a member of the Project Steering Board (PSB) representing thousands of accredited individual and groups of farmers.
This year, the accreditation of the trading center was simplified already for the convenience of stakeholders. These are no fees collected from accreditation.
The trading center is now open for agritourism. An estimated 2,000 local and foreign tourist had already visited BAPTC.
Further, in partnership with the Agricultural Credit and Policy Council (ACPC), the center has been helping farmers with loan assistance. Ten million pesos was allotted for 2016 and an additional thirty million is set to be added to the loan fund from the previous year.
The BAPTC PSB had been continuously conducting meetings in order to fast-track the operations of the trading center, meticulously discussing every detail to minimize glitches.
By Jenny M. Dayao