Fertilizer scam all over again? (Conclusion)

Here's the conclusion on the Quedancor anomaly written by the VERA Files. (Review Part 1 here.)

IN a book titled Quedancor: The Country’s Premier Credit and Guarantee Company, Quedancor executives wrote that the URP “precipitated” what would later be touted as an innovative no-collateral lending scheme for microborrowers: The Self-Reliant Team (SRT) Model. In fact, Nelson Buenaflor (veteran agriculture bureaucrat) likes to be called the “Father of the SRT.”

An SRT consists of three to 15 members who live in the same barangay, have the same project and act as coguarantors. The SRT issues postdated checks to Quedancor (or the Quedan and Rural Credit Guarantee Corp.) as payment for a three-year loan of up to P50,000 for a production project and P20,000 for a livelihood project.

The projects range from grains and high-value crops, to fisheries, livestock and poultry, and other commodities, including swine-raising and the URP. A production loan bears a yearly interest of 14 percent and working capital loan, a monthly 2 percent. (Read the rest here. Illustration by BusinessMirror)