`Group Wants Bank Support for Greek Olive Oil Exports - Olive Oil Times

Group Wants Bank Support for Greek Olive Oil Exports

By Costas Vasilopoulos
Sep. 24, 2012 11:49 UTC

Olive oil and other agri­cul­tural prod­ucts of Greece, it has been reported, can play an impor­tant role in the revival of the country’s dev­as­tated econ­omy. Towards this direc­tion, the National Confederation of Hellenic Commerce has com­piled two pro­pos­als to boost Greek olive oil exports dur­ing the cur­rent unfa­vor­able busi­ness con­di­tions. As expected, their epi­cen­ter is financ­ing and the fluc­tu­a­tion of prices in the olive oil indus­try.

First, the con­fed­er­a­tion wants banks to actively back any olive oil export by imme­di­ately financ­ing the ven­ture, thus min­i­miz­ing pay­ment standby time to zero and elim­i­nat­ing any poten­tial glitches in the process.

The sec­ond pro­posed mea­sure would kick in when olive oil prices fall below a crit­i­cal limit below pro­duc­tion costs. At that time the oil pro­duc­ers, instead of sell­ing, would store their oil and receive bank fund­ing equal to 70 per­cent of its value. This mea­sure aims right at the cen­ter of the big firms’ poli­cies which manip­u­late olive oil prices to their own ben­e­fit and would sup­pos­edly deter them from resort­ing to such prac­tices.

According to the con­fed­er­a­tion, if their pro­pos­als are imple­mented, in only five years the total of Greek olive oil pro­duc­tion will be exported as branded, yield­ing mul­ti­ple ben­e­fits for the econ­omy.

Of course, if these sug­ges­tions find their way to a leg­is­la­tion act, it remains to be seen if the barely-breath­ing bank­ing sec­tor can meet the require­ments due to the lim­ited resources.



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