5th December 2024
Chairman’s Address
Launch of SCGF Loyalty Card
- My Fellow Board Members of Sugar Cane Growers Fund
- All institutional Heads, stakeholders, Government officials,
- Our Business Partners
- Valued Growers and Invited Guests
- CEO, Management, and staff of SCGF
Bula Vinaka, Good Afternoon and Namaste
First of all, allow me to thank the almighty and acknowledge the past, current, and future owners of this land, where the Hall stands.
Today is an extraordinary or historic day for not only the Sugar Cane Growers Fund (SCGF) and cane growers but also for Fiji for the first-ever unique card that we will launch.
As mentioned by the CEO, in the last 8 -10 months SCGF has brought about many policy flexibilities for the growers’ needs and introduced attractive packages.
We continuously looked at the best ways to sustain the Fund and as such when I joined the Board early this year, we looked at the risk and return of the Fund. We also gave due consideration to the Government’s and the industry’s aspiration to increase production.
You will note various forms of incentives are given by the Government for the industry for the betterment of our growers.
Grower Loyalty Program
We considered that the industry has over 10,500 productive growers that have economies of scale and buying powers collectively. They collectively can and should have the ability to get the best offers.
Given such points, SCGF formulated a SCGF LOYALTY PROGRAM that would reward the productive sugar cane growers of Fiji.
The whole intention is to provide value-adding or extraordinary services in collaboration with some essential service and product partners that would make an impact on the lives of ordinary growers.
The uniqueness of this Program is that they (Growers) do not necessarily have to be customers of SCGF and not any special service that SCGF provides them, but SCGF has gone through Expressions of Interest to service and product providers of :
- Farm Machinery and Implements
- Hardware, Building Materials and Tools
- Farm Contractors-
- Supplier of Medical and Pharmacy services
- Supply of Furniture and White Goods
- Mobile Phone Provider- Vodafone
- Provider for ICT Products – Datec
These partners have agreed to give some level of discounts to our growers on the production of the Loyalty Card. This could be 2%, 5%, or 10%, that would be a big savings!
We are also in negotiation with supplier of 2 petroleum companies.
Our endeavor is to get in other partners to be part of this unique program.
I thank those of you present here today. Thank you so much for coming forward to be our partners in this “Giving Back “to the community.
On the loyalty card, there will be no membership fee initially to the growers with an initial period of 3 – years of Membership. This Loyalty Program will be available to only registered productive cane growers.
This card will be personal to them and will not be sold, transferred, assigned to, or shared with family, friends, or others.
I also take this opportunity to thank the solution providers, GEM IT who are quite experienced in card services.
The growers fill out the application at all the District Offices, photos will be taken and the application is sent to the Head Office to generate a card and send it back to the District Office for collection by the growers.
We expect this service to fully operationalize from 15th December 2024 and the application forms, it will be shared through, social media, our SCGF website, and through all the sugar stakeholders and SCGF Office.
Interest rate Reduction
The Board this morning met and after comprehensive deliberation has agreed to reduce the interest rate from 6% to 4.5% which would come into effect from 1st January 2025. This would reduce the burden on the growers. This has all come about with diversification of assets whereby SCGF has acquired a property in Lautoka for $ 4 million and anticipated returns over $0.250million are directly passed to the growers, though the reduction impact is almost $0.500million.
I would say this is a Christmas gift for all our growers.
Way Forward 2025
We expect the year to be challenging and exciting as we have approved our Annual Budget, anticipating business growth against the backdrop of interest rate reduction and production increase. We also expect to revisit our Strategic Plan in the year.
Conclusion
Thank you very much and wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Thank you and Vinaka Vakalevu .
Ahemad Bhamji
Chairman
