Faced with the current health crisis due to the COVID 19 pandemic that affects Chile and the world, Agroseguros executive director Ricardo Prado assured today that the Ministry of Agriculture, through the state entity that it leads, continues to grant a subsidy to all who take out insurance at the insurance companies that participate in the Program (HDI Seguros, Renta Nacional, Mapfre Seguros) or through other entities that operate with this type of instrument, such as banking (BancoEstado, Banco de Chile, Santander and BCI ), and others such as INDAP and insurance brokers.

In fact, Prado specified that in this new scenario, the demand for state-subsidized insurance has remained to date. "There has even been evidence of an increase in the demand for forestry and agricultural insurance by farmers, ranchers and small and medium forest owners." To date, he said that insurance companies have continued to pay compensation to farmers who have been affected by any of the risks covered by insurance policies (agricultural, livestock and forestry) and also granting compensation to users of INDAP that opted for price coverage for corn and wheat.

For his part, the Minister of Agriculture, Antonio Walker, specified that all Agro services continue to function and recalled that his portfolio made available a few days ago a web platform with recommendations to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the agricultural world, through videos, graphic instructions and downloadable documents that allow small farmers, packers, processing plants, fairgrounds and agricultural companies, to download content and to learn about self-care measures to avoid the coronavirus.

“From the first day we said that the most important thing is to protect all the people who work in this food chain. There are currently more than a million people working in agriculture so that Chile has food and this platform allows information regarding how to care for the people in our field, "said the Secretary of State.

In this scenario, the director of Agroseguros also called for farmers, ranchers, and small and medium forest owners in the country to continue to contract in a timely manner state-subsidized insurance in order to adequately protect their crops, animals and trees, in addition to its working capital, recalling the damages caused that have recently affected some regions of our country and that have left considerable losses due to rain, hail, fires, frosts, and others.

“The objective of Agro Insurance is to protect farmers from economic losses caused by damages caused by climatic events, natural events and diseases, allowing them to recover the invested working capital and thus improve their financial stability allowing the continuity of the farmer and his family group in the productive activity ”, he recalled.

For more information on the product line and the requirements of the Agroseguros subsidy, you can visit the website www.agroseguros.gob.cl, while the content of the Minagri recommendations on the Covid 19 are available at https://covid19.minagri.gob.cl/