Page 26 - 2019 Annual Report Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan

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Cultivation: Strolling through the fields Unit Two: Enhancing Farmers’Welfare
interest in employing labor or assigning staff in their employ, and prevent discrimination against the disabled. We also reassessed supporting measures for early (voluntary) retirement of staff at fishermen’s associations, in order to ensure that fishermen’s associations use staff flexibly and to promote personnel turnover at these associations.
The COA also amended Article 3 and Article 8 of the "Regulations About Standards for Determinations and Examinations of Qualifications to Persons Who Engage in Fishery Work and Apply to Join in National Health Insurance Programs" to protect the right to work of citizens’ spouses who hold residence permits. If such persons are actually engaged in fishery work, these amendments guarantee their right to work and allow them to become Category 3 insured persons under National Health Insurance.
Under the "Act of Irrigation Association Organization," the COA monitored and guided irrigation associations in handling irrigation and drainage activities, and continued to promote irrigation association reform. In addition, to minimize the burden on farmers, irrigation associations have long ceased collecting membership fees, with the government instead appropriating NT$2.23 billion in 2019 to subsidize irrigation associations.
(10) Innovating in agricultural financial services
A. Diversification of agricultural financial services
In order to strengthen the quality of services and competitiveness of farmers’ and fishermen’s associations, the COA assigned the Agricultural Bank of Taiwan (ABT) to integrate services and channels at the credit departments of farmers’ and fishermen’s associations. In June of 2010 the ABT signed a contract with farmers’ and fishermen’s associations covering items for which their credit departments could accept payments on behalf of others, and created a comprehensive system of financial services.
Credit departments are allowed to provide 1,042 types of payment acceptance services, including insurance premiums for national pensions; payments for water, telecoms, credit cards, gas, and cable TV; and the fuel tax for cars and motorcycles. As of the end of 2019, 1,168 operational centers of 311 credit departments had collected 146.99 million payments, totaling NT$588.7 billion. In order to upgrade the functions of the agricultural credit guarantee, in 2019 the COA used the agricultural credit guarantee mechanism to facilitate access to financing for farmers and fishermen in 29,791 cases, with loans totaling NT$26 billion.
B. The credit departments of farmers’ and fishermen’s associations
In 2019 the COA continued to take measures to improve the operational structure of credit departments. As of the end of 2019, total deposits at all credit departments were NT$1.906 trillion, with total outstanding loans of NT$1.173 trillion. Before-tax net profit was NT$5.8 billion. The non-performing loan ratio was 0.43%, and of the 311 credit departments in the country, 261 had non-performing loan ratios of less than 1%, of which 53 had non- performing loan ratios of 0%, indicating that loan quality was quite high.
Overall, the operational structure of credit departments has significantly improved. The COA will continue to maintain a firm grasp of the operational situation at credit departments, understand problems and offer assistance, and strengthen oversight and guidance work to continue to assist credit departments to ensure sound operations and to maintain the stable development of agricultural finance.
C. Policy-oriented special agricultural loans
To promote agricultural development and enhance the well-being of farmers and fishermen, the COA continued to promote "policy-oriented special agricultural loans." In 2019, the COA provided 43,000 farm and