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The Government of the Republic of Serbia

In the service of citizens

Farmers will not be left without subsidies

Belgrade, 14 April 2009

Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management Sasa Dragin said that agriculture is in a grave situation and that the impact of the global economic crisis will be most severely felt in the countryside, but stressed that the Ministry will make savings in all fields, except on subsidies for farmers.

File photo of Sasa Dragin

Author: Tanjug

In an interview to the Vecernje Novosti daily, Dragin said that the Ministry will lack one half of the funds needed to fulfil its obligations because of the planned budget cut of 26%, while important projects will suffer because of the reduction in the number of employees.

The official government web site gives excerpts from the interview:

Where will the Ministry save the most:

On everything but subsidies. Around 90% of the Ministry budget is spent on subsidies to farmers and 10% on everything else. Farmers need not fear that they will lose their subsidies because we will do all we can to make sure that every registered farm receives RSD 12,000 per hectare. However, we have tightened up the terms for registering agricultural households. Thus the number of farms receiving subsidies will be reduced by 60%. It is not logical that Croatia has 150,000 households and Serbia as many as 420,000. We will save considerable funds that way.

Is there an additional source of financing:

I will strive to make sure that the agriculture budget becomes balanced, not just a source of funds. This year we introduced obligatory pension insurance for farmers and we believe that it will garner an additional RSD 8 billion for the budget. We agreed with the Ministry of Finance not to collect debts which were due before the end of 2008, but to adopt amendments and write off the debts.

Do you fear that Serbia will not have enough food?

There will be enough food, Serbia will not go hungry. What we should ask is whether farmers will be able to produce food under these market conditions and with these subsidies. My job is to provide those subsidies to farmers.

Will you succeed?

It will be hard with a budget like this; all neighbouring countries have a budget of 5%, while Serbia only gives 2.7% of the budget to agriculture.

Are there any indications that parliament will soon discuss a set of laws related to agriculture which are crucial for Serbia’s EU integration?

In April, hopefully, the most important thing for me is the law on agriculture; that it is harmonised with European standards.

How many acts are yet to be adopted?

Nearly 40% of all regulations necessary for EU accession are agriculture-related. Of the total number of 8,000 regulations, only five regulations have been adopted so far.