Recently in Interest rates Category

Discounted loans at 0.8% lower than normal rates are available through AMC which has access to European Investment Bank funding to support small and medium sized businesses.

Typical eligible projects include buildings, grain dryers, robotic and other milking kit, poultry housing equipment, vegetable and milk processing plant.

Vehicles, renewables, slurry and water storage may also qualify as well as other projects such as farm shops, orchard establishment, dairy cows, field drainage, research and development.

The minimum loan amount is £25,500 while the maximum is about £11m. Loans are for up to 10 years and can be base rate linked or fixed interest rate, on interest only or repayment terms.

With the total fund pot limited to £250m, there has already been a high level of interest so anyone wanting access to it should act quickly, says AMC.

Barclays head of agriculture Martin Redfearn makes full use of the tried and tested mnemonic “CAMPARI” to explain what a banker is looking for when deciding who to lend money to.

Broken down into its constituent parts, CAMPARI stands for Character, Ability, Means, Purpose, Amount, Repayment and Insurance, he told a recent poultry seminar.

Tick all of those boxes and you’ve got yourself a loan!

Well, I’ve got my own drink-related mnemonic when deciding what I look for when choosing a bank - and that is VODKA.

V stands for Value. A bank should offer its customers great value for money - and that means free banking and realistic interest rates. The current premiums over base rates on borrowings are a disgrace and as for the pitiful rates of interest on savings…

Yesterday (Thursday) I had the pleasure of attending one of the Andersons spring seminars at Salisbury racecourse on Opportunities in a Changing Agriculture.

Surprisingly it was the first of these annual events I'd been to - and sadly one of the last that well-known agricultural consultant and analyst Francis Mordaunt would be giving before his impending retirement.

Explaining complicated issues in simple and engaging terms is a gift, and one that Francis has in abundance.

In just 30 minutes he gave a crash course on the current state of British agriculture, encompassing most of the external factors affecting it, giving an assessment of the health of the industry and providing some useful pointers as to where we might be heading.

The key points were as follows:

* UK farming has weathered the recession better than most sectors. Total Income From Farming (TIFF) in 2008 and 2009 came to over £4bn each year - well up on the £2-3bn seen in the previous eight years.

* At this level, TIFF was finally in excess of direct payments, showing that farming is making a small profit even without subsidy...

With the festive season fast approaching, I thought I'd get my crystal ball out and predict some prices for six month's hence.

It's never an easy task. Just one look at the price graphs at the back of Farmers Weekly is enough to demonstrate the rollercoaster trip that agricultural markets have been on over the past couple of years.

Furthermore, as one leading banker recently told me, "if there's one thing you can guarantee about forecasts, it's that they'll be wrong".

So, spurred on by this vote of confidence, I can now reveal that, at the end of June 2010, the following values will prevail:

Feed wheat (FW ex-farm price) £107/t
Nitram (GrowHow price)           £205/t
Finished lambs (R3L carcases) 440p/kg
Red diesel (FW IPM price)      49p/litre
Bank of England base rate        0.75%
Euro:Sterling exchange rate       86p

But what are your predictions? Why not jot them down in the comment section below, or e-mail them to me at philip.clarke@rbi.co.uk, and I'll come up with a small prize for the closest prediction in six months time. What have you got to lose, apart from your pride and dignity?

Bankers' bonuses have been in the spotlight in recent days, as politicians and the media question the morality of multi-million pound payouts to City highflyers.

But it's not just bankers who get bonuses. Here at Farmers Weekly we too get the occasional perk, and I was especially delighted to receive my 2010 Simba calendar today with some lovely pictures of drills and cultivators.

Better still, yesterday three of us were invited to a pre-Christmas lunch with our well-resourced friends at Barclays.

As might be expected, there was a degree of opulence on display. The view from the 31st floor of Barclays' Canary Wharf HQ over docklands and the O2 Arena was spectacular. The food was straight out of Master Chef. And yes, that was an original Lowry on the wall of the private dining room.

The conversation flowed as easily as the wine, covering a wide range of subjects - from the state of the dairy sector, to succession planning (or lack of), to the future of agricultural shows...

Everyone knows that the banks are desperate to recoup some cash.

Having invested so recklessly for so many years their balance sheets are a mess and they are under intense pressure from shareholders - in some cases, you and me - to shore up their financial foundations.

It is therefore little surprise to see that, despite Bank base rates of a mere 0.5%, the cheapest loan available on the High Street is 7.9% - and that's on the basis that your credit rating is "good".

Further evidence that the banking sector is ignoring political demands to pass on lower interest rates comes with news this week that the Nationwide is breaking its previous promise to peg its variable rate mortgages to base rates. New customers will now pay 4% instead of 2.5%.

But what about the farming sector?

Ask any banker what their approach is to agriculture and they all say they see it as a relatively safe bet and are happy to continue lending to farmers at competitive rates.

Unfortunately, what they say in public and what they do in private seem to be two entirely different things.......

Another Monetary Policy Committee meeting, another interest rate cut - it's becoming a familiar story. But the media take on it seems to have changed.

Up until now, these cuts have been applauded by the media and the business community, who see them as stimulating to the economy.

Lower interest rates encourage people to spend rather than save, (at least, they might if the banks and building societies passed them on), and they ease the burden of debt on small businesses.

This last point is certainly not lost on farmers who are currently facing near-record levels of borrowing.

But the emphasis seems to have shifted in the media this time, and all the talk is about the damage the cuts are doing to savers, who ironically have less to spend as their incomes dive. This could actually damage the economy, they say.

Personally, I'm not too fussed either way. And that's because.....