Agency for Payments in Agriculture to work in Moldova

The Agency for Payments and Intervention in Agriculture will start work in the first quarter of the next year. It will manage all the financial resources earmarked for subsidizing the agricultural producers, which are now distributed by different ministries and companies. It will also implement common standards in distributing subsidies and will ensure transparency in this process, Minister of Agriculture Valeriu Cosarciuc said in an interview, quoted by Info-Prim Neo. “The Agency will be created following requests from the recipients of subsidies, international organizations and experts in agriculture,” Cosarciuc said. According to a study, most of the subsidies go to large farms, the small producers accounting for only 10% of them, the minister said. “Not only the subsidies are yet distributed inequitably. Only 700 economic entities registered as tax payers have been refunded the VAT for supplying products on the home market. But there are 360,000 producers in the agricultural sector. They also supply products on the home market, maybe in larger volumes and of a better quality,” Valeriu Cosarciuc said, adding that in the future there will be subsidized the areas that provide high value added products. “The creation of small and medium-sized companies that process agricultural raw material and pack and store agricultural products will be stimulated so that we could export when the prices are more advantageous.” The minister also said that the agricultural producers will benefit from financial resources for development not only from the subsidization fund, but also from a number of investment projects. A project to enhance competitiveness of rural businesses will be launched in the first half of 2010. It will be financed by the European Commission. The project’s cost is 47 million euros, the minister said.