Farmers entitled to a government rainy season loan each have to pay Agriculture Bank employees an illegal bribe of 30,000 MMK before they can get a loan in Mohnyin District, Kachin State.
According to farm owners, since 21 May 2024, every farmer from Mohnyin (a.k.a. Monghnyin) and Mogaung (a.ka.a. Mongkawng) townships in Mohnyin District has had to pay 30,000 MMK to access the government loans.
The government organised loans are given to farmers to help them through the wet season. For every acre of land a farmer owns they can borrow 150,000 MMK, up to a maximum of 1,500,000 MMK for farmers who own 10 acres or more of fields.
A farm owner from the Indawgyi Lake area in Mohnyin Township said: "We asked the bank employees why they demanded that money. They replied that since we pay taxes to the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), we should also pay taxes to them. In fact, they were demanding 30,000 MMK from each farm owner without any concrete reason. Before receiving the cash loan, the farm owners had to give 30,000 MMK in advance to the bank employees.”
This is the first year bank employees have demanded such bribes. The size of the bribes they ask for are not dependent on the size of the loan the farmer is asking for, they are all just charged 30,000 MMK, irrespective of how much money they want to borrow.
A farm owner who applied for a loan said to Voice of Shan Ni: "Some farm owners complained about this, especially those who own only a small portion of farmland. They felt that the way the money was being taken was unfair on them. However, in the end, everyone had to pay the amount the bank employees demanded, otherwise they could not withdraw the loan.”
Some farmers have allegedly paid a 30,000 MMK bribe and still not yet received their loan.
In Mohnyin Township, approximately 6,500 farm owners received agriculture loans, meaning that they paid bank staff 195 million MMK in bribes. Across Mohnyin District there have been 9,000 applications for the loans meaning that throughout the district farmers have paid a total of 270,000,000 MMK in bribes to Agriculture Bank employees.
