The Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry of Moldova, which is the central authority responsible for the recognition and monitoring of the activity of producer groups, has so far issued recognition certificates to seven such groups, IPN reports.

The Ministry said that it commenced the procedures needed to strengthen the cooperation/association between agricultural producers so as to increase the output of particular homogenous products and to help sell them on the domestic and foreign markets, reduce the production costs and stabilize the producer prices.

To obtain recognition, the producer group must be registered in one of the possible legal and organizational forms and must include at least five members, each with a share of maximum 20% of the votes in the general assembly.

The constitution documents will mandatorily include the association members’ commitment to sell the homogenous product or the group of homogenous products. The group must have a centralized bookkeeping, invoicing and quantitative and qualitative product registration and monitoring system.