Over the weekend of Saturday 16 and Sunday 17 March, President Danilo Medina made another of his now-customary surprise visits, showing up in Villa Trina, a tiny hamlet nestled in the Septentrional Mountains in the province of Espaillat (Moca). During his visit, he pledged RD$44 million in loans for small businesses and promised contracts for their products. In meetings with greenhouse owners, according to El Caribe, he offered RD$120 million in financing as well as promising to repave some of the streets and access to funding from the Farm Development Fund (FEDA). He also met local coffee growers and told them that the government would back the complete replanting of the coffee trees with species that were more resistant to the ‘rust’ virus affecting a large percentage of the nation’s coffee farms. The visit confirms the administration’s interest in the province of Espaillat. In January the President offered RD$85 million to the Zafarraya farming co-op in Moca and for cacao farmers in Joba Arriba in Gaspar Hernandez.