Moldovan Chamber of Commerce, AIPA sign cooperation agreement

Chisinau, 9 December /MOLDPRES/ - The Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) and Agency for Interventions and Payments in Agriculture /AIPA/ signed a cooperation agreement today. The document provides for informing economic agents about the opportunities of accessing financing, identifying partners and foreign equipment suppliers and their assessment, various training, expertise and evaluation services, the CCI press service has reported.

Under this agreement, CCI committed to contribute to inform the business environment about the conditions for accessing agricultural subventions provided by AIPA, as well as the means of the credit given by the Polish government, meant for developing the agricultural sector and which is managed by an Implementation Unit created within AIPA.

„The Chamber of Commerce and Industry has a big network of agencies, which are in permanent contact with the economic agents in areas, whom they daily provide with various services and consultancies. Thus, CCI is the perfect partner in promoting AIPA financing instruments among beneficiaries, informing them, as well as in identifying foreign equipment suppliers, via the chamber system," CCI Head Valeriu Lazar said.

For his part, AIPA Director General Petru Maleru underlined that he counted on the cooperation with CCI, in order to absorb the means of the Polish credit, as well as to assess the fairness of the files submitted to be subsidised by AIPA.

The Polish government has provided a 100-million-euros-worth loan, of which 90 million are meant for re-organising the agricultural sector, especially of farms specialised in traditional agricultural products (milk, meat), as well as other competitive farming goods. The loan is given for a period of 25 years, at an annual interest rate of 0.15 per cent and a five-year grace period. The beneficiaries will receive financing for a 5-8-year period, at an interest rate of 1.5 percent and a four-year grace period, based on the principle first come-first served.

CCI will contribute to identifying Polish partners for financing applicants within the agricultural projects, will provide support for setting up, modernising and restructuring enterprises specialised in producing goods of vegetable or animal origin. At the same time, the chamber will provide evaluation, expertise services to economic agents’ beneficiaries of the assistance credit given by the Polish government.

CCI will also provide business training and consultancy services, help inform Moldovan business people about the procedure of giving financing for the farming sector, processing food products and the related infrastructure, participate in discussions, public-private dialogue concerning concrete topics, in order to improve the entrepreneurial environment on the whole, involving in working out concrete legislative initiatives and, subsequently promoting them to be approved by the government or parliament, etc.