Three groups of agricultural producers will receive grants to the value of 10.2 million lei within the post-harvest investment grants program “Facilitation of access to export markets” of the World Bank-funded Moldova Agriculture Competitiveness Projects (MAC-P). The decision was taken by the interministerial application assessment commission headed by Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Food Industry Gheorghe Gaberi, IPN reports.

According to a communiqué of the MAC-P project, the groups of producers asked for investment support for building cold storage facilities and installing sorting lines.

The Causeni cooperative “COM-FRUCTFRES” will build a cold storage facility with the capacity of 500 tonnes and will install a sorting line of 10.7 million lei. The grant is 3.8 million lei. The group of producers from Cahul “Struguri de Colibasi” will invest 5.8 million lei in a cold storage facility with the capacity of 350 tonnes and a pre-cooling room. The grant is 2.19 million lei. The third group wants to construct a cold storage facility with the capacity of 1,000 tonnes and to install a sorting line at the cost of 11.34 million lei, 4.2 million lei of which will be offered as a grant.

Earlier, five groups of fruit and vegetable producers were selected to benefit from grants of 17.8 million lei, if they provide the necessary co-financing.

According to the Agency for Payments and Intervention in Agriculture, three groups of producers have so far received the asked grants: the group of almond and hazelnuts producers “Nocciole” (Causeni) – 895,700 lei, the group of table grape producers “Strugurele auriu” (Stefan Voda) – 4.8 million lei, and the group of table grape, peach and plum producers “Basan Agro” (Cimislia) – 4.9 million lei.

In the first round of the grants program of MAC-P launched in April, there were submitted nine applications. Only one of the applications was rejected because the group didn’t meet the requirements. The second round was launched on August 25. The groups of producers that want to take part should submit applications to the Agency for Payments and Intervention in Agriculture by October 30, 2014. The budget of the grants program is US$7 million and will be used until 2017.