The National Federation of Moldovan Farmers, the National Union of Farmer Associations UniAgroProtect and the National Federation of Farmers Agroinform are upset by the latest rise in fuel prices and threaten with protests, Info-Prim Neo reports. “The recent rise in the prices of fuels is unjustified. Last week, the price of oils on international markets dropped, while the Moldovan leu has slightly appreciated against the U.S. dollar. In Romania and Ukraine the prices have decreased”, UniAgroProtect head Alexandru Slusari declared at a press conference. The representatives of the farmers said that the methodology of calculating the prices of fuels is out-of-date but convenient for the importers. “All our attempts to solve the issue of fuel prices, which keeps agriculture and the other branches of national economy as hostages, failed. ANRE claims it lacks the tools to influence this process, while the Ministry of Economy, despite two years of promises and meetings, still hasn’t revised the current methodology”, complained Slusari. Vasile Marzeco, executive director of the National Federation of Moldovan Farmers, said that in Moldova the rich ones were always right and corruption dictated prices. Iurie Hurmuzache of AGROinform thinks that the increased fuel prices is one more burden on the shoulders of drought-stricken farmers, especially considering that fuel represents 30% of the total expenses. The farmer organizations issued a series of demands for authorities, such as the development and approval of a new methodology for calculating fuel prices, which would forbid the import of oil products from off-shore companies. Another demand is to grant ANRE the right to reject the importers’ demands to increase prices. The three NGOs demand the minimum social capital of importing companies to be decreased from 8 to 1 million lei, the storage requirement to be decreased from 5000 to 1500 cubic meters and the license cost from 260,000 lei to 100,000 lei. This would allow more companies to import petroleum products, not only the big ones. Another proposal concerns free licenses for the import of diesel fuel for farming, for the farmer cooperatives and the refund of diesel excises to farmers.