Another 15 groups of producers will be set up this year in the horticultural sector. These will be able to apply for grants for the post-harvest industry to the value of up to US$ 350,000. The issue was discussed in a meeting of the Supervisory Board of the Consolidated Unit for Implementing and Monitoring Projects in Agriculture, which is managed by the MAC-P project, IPN reports.

The Supervisory Board’s head Vasile Bumacov, acting Minister of Agriculture and Food Industry, said that one of the greatest challenges of the project was to convince the Moldovan farmers to form associations. Last year, there were created 18 groups of producers that involve over 100 farmers. “This is a very good result,” stated Bumacov.

Two calls for grants were made last year within the grants program “Facilitation of access to export markets”. The first call involved nine groups of producers and eight of the applications for financing were accepted. Their investments totaled 83.5 million lei, the grants representing 32.5 million lei of these. Owing to the own investments and the provided grants, this year the producers will build seven cold storage facilities with the capacity of 150 to 500 tonnes and will set up three sorting lines.

Coordinator of the Moldova Agriculture Competiveness Project (MAC-P) Olga Sainciuc said the assessment commission within the second call accepted the applications of five groups of producers working in horticulture. The total sum of investments indicated in the investment projects is 41.4 million lei, with 14.3 million lei of it being grants. The money will be used to set up five cold storage facilities, four sorting and packing lines, fruit drying lines, etc.

As to the second post-investment grants program “Sustainable Land Management”, which supports the implementation of social conservation and erosion prevention practices, Olga Sainciuc said the objective this year is to provide 100 grants of up to US$20,000. Grants totaling 5.3 million lei were offered to 33 agricultural companies in 2014 within this program.

The World Bank’s MAC-P project started work in 2013. Two grants programs in agriculture are implemented as part of it – the post-harvest investment grants program “Facilitation of access to export markets”, which is intended for groups of farmers and is implemented in partnership with the Ministry of agriculture, and the grants program “Sustainable Land Management”.