TARLAC CITY (PIA) — The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and Tarlac State University (TSU) collaborated in educating members of Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Organizations (ARBOs) on financial literacy.
This is under DTI’s Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program which seeks to impart knowledge to ARBOs on maximizing the potential of their agricultural land and products in business.
DTI Tarlac Trade-Industry Development Special Paolo Manese said the training sought to educate participants on financial decision-making and the concepts of budgeting, saving, investing, and debt management.
“ARBOs need to purchase assets such as equipment and land for the continuous development of their cooperatives or associations, which entail large amounts of investment that can make or break their organizations. In this seminar, they learned how to assess if their future investment would be profitable,” Manese shared.
TSU Resource Speakers Errish Abitong, Jomari Miranda, and Maria Terese Agustin explained the concepts in three subtopics, specifically Operational Budget, Capital Budget, and Cooperative Action Plan.
One of the participants, Precy Pimentel, expressed how the activity helped them to put into consideration assessing the benefits of the assets to the members before purchasing them.
“Funds are important for cooperatives. Through this seminar, I further realized its significance as it reminded us not to be hasty in investing to ensure profitability,” she said.
About 20 ARBO members from the municipalities of Camiling, La Paz, Paniqui, and San Manuel participated in the capacity building activity. (CLJD/GLSB, PIA Region 3-Tarlac)
