The Agency for Intervention and Payments in Agriculture received 2,017 applications for agricultural subsidies to the value of 314.3 million lei. The Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry said most of the applicants asked for subsidies for building greenhouses, planting fruit trees, purchasing agricultural machinery and constructing cold storage facilities, IPN reports.
As many as 414 applications for subsidies of over 44.8 million lei were transmitted to the State Treasury, which will pay these subsidies. Over 90 applications for subsides of 57 million lei were transmitted to inspectorates, while almost 1,200 applications for subsidies of over 160 million lei are being examined. Another 300 applications for subsidies of almost 50 million lei are being verified and are to be introduced in the Agency’s electronic database.
The Agency also received applications for emergency assistance from 862 agricultural companies for apples and from 317 companies for plums. The applicants asked for assistance of 181 million lei for apples and of 27 million lei for plums. The farmers who cultivated plums fully received compensations, while those who supplied apples for processing were compensated only partially because the budget was used up. At the end of 2014, there were 443 agricultural companies that hadn’t received the assistance of 72 million lei they asked.
This year, there will be paid emergency assistance based on applications for compensations for the supply of apples submitted in 2014 to farmers owning orchards of up to 15 ha. On September 4, the Agency started to distribute the sum of 37 million lei, allocated by the Ministry of Finance, to 327 economic entities. A decision as to the payment of 45 million lei to 116 economic entities that possess orchards larger than 15 ha is to be taken this month.
In the period between August 1 and September 7, the Agency for Intervention and Payments in Agriculture collects applications for financial support from farmers and agricultural companies that last autumn supplied technical sorts of grapes to processing plants and only from farmers who supplied plums/apples (in 2014 only legal entities were eligible). By September 1, the Agency’s local offices received 1,324 applications for compensations of 22.11 million lei.
