UN Food and Agriculture Organization to carry out two new technical assistance projects in Moldova

Chisinau, 29 July /MOLDPRES/ - The Agriculture, Regional Development and Environment Ministry (MADRM) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) signed two technical assistance projects today. The programmes will contribute to improving the agricultural statistics and promotion of agro-food products both in Moldova and abroad.  

„The projects signed today will be oriented to two principal directions: the first one sees ministry’s support to implement the policy of promotion of agro-food goods and another one, challenging for us, consists in the assistance provided to the National Statistics Bureau (BNS) to improve the agricultural statistics, where MADRM will have an indirect benefit,” competent minister Georgeta Mincu said.  

According to the official, by the carrying out of these two programmes with FAO’s support, decision-makers plan to establish administrative and institutional capacities to favour the native producers’ access to foreign markets, especially the ones from the European Union. FAO will also support the Moldovan cabinet in assessing the data of the last agricultural census from 2011, selecting the relevant statistics indexes, which will be a stage of preparation for the next agricultural census, due in 2020.   

For his part, the FAO representative in Moldova, Raimund Jehle, appreciated the productive cooperation with Moldova during more years. “We launch another two projects which represent new possibilities for the agro-food sector of Moldova, while focusing on the important sectors in the development of the natural resources’ management and enhancing the competitiveness of the local producers. Moldova is on a very good way and we hope that, following the implementation of these programmes, we will identify new success stories in agriculture,” Raimund Jehle said.    

At present, Moldova’s cooperation with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization is based on the country programme for 2016-2019 and has three priorities – enhancing the competitiveness of the agricultural sector, promotion of the sustainable agriculture and rural development, improving the capacities in the management of natural resources and management of natural disasters.  

In the last two years, FAO has provided Moldova with support through implementation of more projects nationally and five projects regionally, focused on  food safety, health of animals and plants, protection against drought.