Moldovan government to allocate 100 million lei to compensate farmers' losses

Chisinau, 20 August /MOLDPRES/ - Prime Minister Dorin Recean and Deputy Prime Minister, Agriculture and Food industry Minister Vladimir Bolea today discussed with more farmers and representatives of associations of growers of cereals, oil-bearing plants and sugar beet ways of overcoming the difficult situation in the agricultural sector, in the wake of the drought and extremely high air temperatures of this summer, the government’s communication department has reported.         

At the meeting, the PM informed that, in the next two weeks, the government would allocate 100 million lei from the agriculture intervention fund for compensating the losses borne by farmers. The prime minister gave assurances that he would continue identifying additional resources for backing the farmers, in form of compensation of losses, increasing of subsidies or guaranteeing the loans by the state.     

Prime Minister Dorin Recean stressed the need to identify long-term solutions for the development of the agricultural sector. ‘’The climate changes impose us to adapt to the new situation, to implement new technologies, to irrigate, to switch from the cultivation of cereals to products with high value added. We should act in perspective and on long-term, as the problem repeats year after year and we can solve it only together,’’ the prime minister said.   

The farmers and officials discussed also other proposals on supporting the entrepreneurs in the sector: access to cheap financing, introduction of the single tax in agriculture, adjusting of the excise duties on diesel, subsidization of new crops and per performance on hectare, extension of the programme on afforestation. Also, the PM referred to the present instruments for the farmers worst hit by the drought. ‘’ We facilitated the getting of the certificate on the force majeure state in case of each farmer individually. An emergency state in agriculture does not help, but endangers the next agricultural year,’’ the prime minister also said.     

According to data by the Agriculture and Food Industry Ministry, 2,428 inspection reports on the damages borne by farmers have been compiled so far, as a result of the unfriendly weather conditions in all regions of Moldova. It is about 97,000 hectares of agricultural crops. The worst hit crop is the maize.