The Agency for Payments and Intervention in Agriculture has disbursed US$1.5 million to six groups of producers that took part in the program of grants in post-harvest infrastructure “Facilitation of market access for farmers” of the World Bank-funded Moldova Agriculture Competitiveness Projects (MAC-P). Most of the groups that accessed the funds participated in the third call of the grants program between April 10 and June 8, 2015. The grants are disbursed immediately after the farmers confirm the co-financing for the investment project, IPN reports.

According to a communique of the program, the largest investment project of the six is that proposed by the group of table grape and plum producers of Cantemir district - “Moldagrovitis”. This group will build a two-room cold storage facility with the capacity of over 1,000 tonnes. The total investment in the project is US$1.1 million, US$350,000 of which is the grant from MAC-P.

Most of the economic entities implement investment projects to build cold storage facilities for fruit and vegetables and to also create a competitive sorting and packing infrastructure. The group of farmers “Fruitmol group” based in Straseni is constructing a packing, sorting and processing house at a cost of about US$1 million, US$350,000 of which was provided by MAC-P.

The three calls for applications held within the US$7 million grants programs “Facilitation of market access for farmers” in 2014-2015 involved 28 groups of agricultural producers growing fruit and vegetables. Nine of the applications are being examined, while 19 were accepted. Of these, 13 cooperative have already accessed grants of 56.5 million lei for implementing investment projects to the value of 148 million lei.

Thus, owing to the support provided by MAC-P, nine cold storage faculties with a capacity of 350 to 1,860 tonnes, seven fruit and vegetables sorting and packing lines and three fruit drying lines are being built in the country. There was purchased equipment for processing and sorting almonds and nuts, etc.