Agea and BPER join forces to facilitate access to credit for agricultural businesses
Agea is pressing ahead at a rapid pace with the agreements it is finalising with the banking sector to facilitate access to credit for agricultural businesses. Today, the Agency signed a memorandum of understanding with BPER, the Banca Popolare dell’Emilia-Romagna, under the framework opened by Agea to the Italian banking sector at the end of 2025. The agreement aims to promote operational and technical coordination designed to capitalise, on the one hand, on the Agency’s information resources and specialist expertise and, on the other, on BPER’s experience in providing financial support to agricultural businesses, thereby fostering the development of increasingly effective tools and solutions to support investment and competitiveness in the sector.
“The agri-food sector has always been one of BPER’s strategic areas. Sharing expertise and information enables us to develop tangible synergies, facilitate access to credit and support investment by agricultural businesses, thereby contributing to the competitiveness of these enterprises and the development of local areas,” said Luca Gotti, Chief Retail & Commercial Banking Officer at BPER –. “Thanks to our extensive local presence, our direct knowledge of production chains and a dedicated range of products and services, we support agricultural businesses on a daily basis as they pursue growth and innovation. Agreements such as the one signed with Agea confirm the importance of dialogue and collaboration between the banking sector and the organisations that support the agricultural sector.”
“These agreements represent a further step in the process that Agea is pursuing to support agricultural businesses. “Today,” added Agea’s director, Fabio Vitale, “we are able to pay out more quickly and bring forward funding from the Common Agricultural Policy, making the funds to which farmers are entitled available to them in a timely manner. This allows us to free up credit from the need to finance the wait for payments and to turn it into a lever for investment, increased production and higher productivity. At the same time, through agreements with credit institutions, we can create the conditions whereby CAP funds for the following financial year can also be advanced on favourable terms. This generates a further multiplier effect: public funds are channelled into the sector rapidly, and credit can be directed towards supporting new investments and new production capacity. It is a financial mechanism that combines timely payments, access to credit and investment capacity, with a specific aim: to provide agricultural businesses with concrete tools to grow and strengthen their competitiveness.”
The collaboration between Agea and Bper forms part of an innovation drive that sees the Agency and the Bank increasingly committed to making the most of data and advisory services to support the development of the national agri-food sector. In this context, the business information held by Agea can provide added value when assessing the creditworthiness of agricultural enterprises, promoting greater financial inclusion within the sector and offering new opportunities even to businesses that do not have a traditional set of financial statements.
