The Government will compensate 30% of the value of the excise duty on diesel fuel used in agriculture. Farmers will also be provided with the circulating assets needed to purchase inputs.
At the same time, it will be possible to compensate up to 200,000 lei from the interest rate on the loans taken out for the supplementation of current assents and, additionally, up to 150,000 lei for the loans taken out for investment projects.
The measures to support the agricultural sector were announced by Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilița in a press conference on Wednesday.
The prime minister said that in the last two weeks she met with farmers and made fact-finding visits and it is clear that the situation is complicated. Fuel prices, especially diesel, have risen, import and export routes through Ukraine are no longer accessible, and prices for a range of products and services needed in farming have also increased significantly.
Natalia Gavrilița said that more money will be granted for agricultural subsidies. Whereas in 2021 the Subsidy Fund was 1.1 billion lei, in 2022 it has been increased to 1.5 billion lei. At the same time, the state budget will be adjusted in a few weeks, and the Subsidy Fund will be increased to 1.7 billion lei. The extra money will be redirected to finance support measures in the context of the crisis.
“We will take other measures, too, which were important before the war and before the crisis, but are especially important now for the reorientation of production. We will increase the subsidy cap to 1.5 million lei for the construction of renewable energy production facilities. We will subsidize for the first time the establishment of multi-annual plantations with the varieties registered in the catalogs of the European Union, without the need to adopt them in the National Catalog. We will also subsidize energy efficiency practices by compensating 50% of the cost of leguminous seeds of local production, but not more than 2,000 lei per hectare”, said the prime minister.
The draft measures for farmers are due to be published on Thursday and will be approved next week. Natalia Gavrilița also announced that next week she will pay a visit to Germany to discuss the instruments available for additional support in times of crisis.
