APIA's Pintea: More than 9,800 farmers have applied for drought compensation

More than 9,800 farmers have applied for drought compensation, and the estimated number of potential beneficiaries is 30,000, said on Tuesday the director general of the Agency for Payments and Intervention for Agriculture (APIA), Adrian Pintea.

"At the end of August, the Romanian Government approved the emergency ordinances regarding the establishment of four new aid schemes and already on September 3 we started receiving the payment requests for these schemes at the level of the local centers, 265, respectively 42 county centers. I refer to the aid scheme granted to agricultural producers who set up agricultural crops in the autumn of 2019 affected by the drought, and the last day to submit these applications is September 15, and another payment scheme is sustained aid for cattle breeders, in the context of the economic crisis generated by the Covid-19 pandemic, also, the submission deadline is September 29," said Adrian Pintea.

He noted that the deadline for aid schemes for poultry farmers and pig farmers is September 29.

Adrian Pintea stated that by September 7, some 9,814 applications had been submitted for drought, for an area of 200,000 hectares. Five applications were submitted for cattle, six applications for pigs and four applications for poultry.

"In terms of drought, we estimate potential beneficiaries at around 30,000, 950-960 beneficiaries for cattle, 250-260 beneficiaries for pigs and poultry. Surely everyone will have time to make these requests and the request is to it is presented at the local centers, respectively the county centers," mentioned Adrian Pintea.

He said that Romania's financial allocation for direct payments to farmers from the European Agricultural Guarantee Fund (EAGF) for the 2020 campaign was 1.943 billion euros, and so far APIA has authorized only 1.890 billion euros from direct payments to which are added the payments from the EAGF for market measures, foreign trade, the promotion of agricultural products, the payments from the European Rural Development Fund and the payments from the national budget.

"Thus, in total, in the 2019 campaign, the APIA authorized for payment a record amount of over 2.93 billion euros, the absorption rate of funds being this year of 99% in, as we all know, an atypical year, marked by unprecedented events that we all know, namely the coronavirus pandemic, the unfavorable weather conditions and so on," said Adrian Pintea.