Farmers set to protest

Agricultural producers will protest on Tuesday to express their disagreement with Government’s intention to increase the VAT on agricultural products from 8% to 20%, a measure stipulated by the budgetary-fiscal policy of 2013. President of the National Farmers’ Association Valeriu Cosarciuc told a news conference Monday that the protests will be peaceful and will imply parking agricultural equipment on side of highways and periodic honking. For this purpose, 33 meeting points of the agricultural equipment were designated at crossroads, in such a manner that the roads will not be blocked. The slogans that will accompany the protests are, in fact, the farmers’ claims: “We demand the VAT for farm goods and sugar stay at 8%”, “VAT refunds – corruption growth”, “20% VAT equals unprocessed fields and lost jobs”, “To those from the country-side VAT is a burden”, “The drought affects us, taxes bankrupt us”, and others. Valeriu Cosarciuc regrets that although during the elaboration of the fiscal and customs policies for next year a series of roundtables took place, the organizations that represent farmers could not convince the authorities not to increase the VAT. “It is not a wise decision, because the bad weather gravely affected agricultural producers; they have huge losses, which will be especially felt during 2013. Whereas the increase of the VAT share will only be an extra burden on the shoulders of agricultural producers”, he specified. In his opinion, in the long run, this measure is not good even for processers and exporters, because they will be forced to work with de-capitalized producers that will have reached their insolvency bound, which will considerably decrease shipments, and the Budget will have losses due to VAT refunds. Alexandru Slusari, head of UniAgroProtect, said that there are 5 months left till the fiscal and customs policies are effective, and until then producers’ associations will continue to fight and try to convince authorities that the VAT increase will not solve the Budget issues. Meanwhile, Slusari along with other producers have addressed a message to political parties and movements to stay as far away as possible from the farmers’ protests, and not to use them to their interest. “We will not allow Parties to accumulate political capital by using the issues that agricultural producers face”, said Slusari.