Photo from UNIAN
Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman calls on the government to seek ways to ensure additional state support for agricultural enterprises, particularly small and medium-sized farms.
"We need to envisage state support for farmers when drafting the budget for 2017 and during the revision of the 2016 budget," Groysman said at a government meeting.
The prime minister emphasized that the funds should be spent on the agricultural sector development, particularly in the field of agricultural products processing as the main driver of growth, as well as the manufacturing of agricultural equipment.
"Today, we produce several pieces of agricultural equipment but we need to produce tens of thousands of pieces of agricultural equipment," Groysman said.
Earlier, Agrarian Minister Taras Kutovyi stated that the Agrarian Ministry jointly with the Ministry of Finance is analyzing the possibility of allocating additional funds from the budget to support agricultural development programs, including supporting small and medium-sized farms and covering lending costs for farmers. According to the Agrarian Ministry, the estimated amount of budget funding can reach UAH 450 million. The amount may be even increased to UAH 600 million, some experts say.
Read alsoMinister of Agrarian Policy Kutovyi: We want to delay lifting moratorium on land salesThe state budget for 2016 provides for UAH 300 million of financial assistance to farmers to compensate interest on loans, as well as UAH 50 million to support livestock production. Late 2015, the Verkhovna Rada, having adopted changes to the Tax Code, partially canceled tax benefits for agricultural enterprises – a special taxation regime for value added tax that had been put in place since 1990. Farmers opposed those changes.