30 July 2019 – During the period April until July, the Albania Agribusiness & Tourism Support Facility completed a series of trainings on Tech Cards with 55 representatives and employees from partner financial institutions’ (OTP Bank, Intesa San Paolo Bank, BESA fund) local branches in Shkodra, Elbasan, Korça, Berat, Fier and Vlora. Overall during this year, the number of trained employees on Tech Cards until now exceeded 110. Participants in the training showed a great interest in the instrument. Tech Cards represent a useful product for farmers, aiming at improving decision-making, efficiency and market performance. The instrument helps farmers apply agrotechnical services efficiently by reducing the farm losses or over-spending, thus resulting in higher profits. In addition, it allows agricultural producers to compare their farm with best practices from other developed farms.
The Tech Card data serves not only farmers, but also service providers and financial institutions, as a tool to better understand the agricultural sector and to accurately assess farm operations. The data is very useful in the decision-making process of financial institutions, as it allows the institution to conduct a realistic assessment of investment plans and business profitability of each farm operation.
The preparation of agriculture technology cards necessarily requires support with information on the input prices. In cooperation with the agricultural input providers, MBM ltd and Agroinput-Jazxhi ltd companies, it was possible to receive detailed information on the entire range of agricultural inputs. Following this collaboration, the AATSF project provided to these two companies a quantity of T-Card books to use in their consultancy to Albanian agribusinesses.