Mr. Won-Sik Noh, APRACA Secretary, Asia Pacific Rural and Agricultural Credit Association
Mr. Calvin Miller, Senior Officer – Agribusiness and Finance, Food and Agriculture Organization 
Mr. Ralph Houtman, Marketing and Rural Finance Officer, Food and Agriculture Organization
Participants and observers

Good Morning, On behalf of Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC),    I would like to welcome you all to Value Chain Finance training. First of all please allow me to express my heartfelt appreciation to Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as well as Asia Pacific Rural and Agricultural Credit Association (APRACA) for the role they have played in making this training reality.              

More than 99 per cent of the world’s food supply comes from the land while less than 1 per cent is from oceans and other aquatic habitats, but the latest natural disaster occurred in several countries including China, Australia, Canada, Japan, or even in Thailand has underlined a serious issue in a global crisis which is likely to effect food production in agricultural sector.

Lack of capital, inefficient producing process and marketing are among key challenges in agricultural development. Value chain finance is expected to be a light at the end of the tunnel to enhance agribusiness and help farmer entrepreneurs to get an access to financial services.

Agricultural financial institutions have played their role in outreaching agricultural lending through expanding network and introducing various loan products and lending methodology in order to meet an increased demand for agricultural production.

I hope that this executive training workshop would be a great opportunity in enhancing mutual understanding in the conceptual and theoretical of value chain finance and push those methodologies to your respective agricultural lending policies and eventually help small scale and related agricultural businesses to meet market demands and to maintain or expand operations or investment for greater access to new market opportunities.

Last but not least, I would like to deeply thank Mr. Calvin Miller and Mr. Prasun Kumar Das, our resource persons of this training event for their fruitful contributions, and also would like to express my gratitude to the participants who have made room in their work schedule and traveled to Pattaya and put their effort to the training.

Wishing you all the best.

Thank you.