PNDR, program with greatest absorption in EU, of 40.2 percent

The National Rural Development Program (PNDR) is the program with the greatest absorption at the level of the European Union member states, with a rate of over 40 percent, and for the next year we expect a 55-percent absorption, Camelia Iliescu, director of the Rural Development General Directorate - AM PNDR within the Ministry of Agriculture stated on Friday. 

"We have reached an absorption rate of 40.2 percent from the National Rural Development Program, in relation to payments, but if we are to take into account that pre-financing of 325 million euro, the absorption rate reaches 44.2 percent. For the next year, we forecast a payment amount of about one billion euro, which would raise the absorption to over 55 percent of the program. The allocation through the PNDR is 9.46 billion euro, of which 8.12 billion euro the contribution of the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development and 1.34 billion euro from national contribution," Camelia Iliescu told the Romanian Food & Agribusiness Conference. 

She stressed that Romania will have a major contribution to the Common Agricultural Policy, given that it will take over the presidency of the Council of the EU next year and "the future budget of the European Union not only on development rural will be debated and cast in stone." 

At the end of last week, the Secretary of State in the Ministry of Agriculture, Alexandru Potor, stated that Romania exceeded the target of 1.2 billion euro, money absorbed in 2018 from the European funds for rural development. 

"The total amount we will receive by the end of 2018 from the PNDR is 1.2 billion euro. The money will certainly enter the country because it is the subject of payment requests that have been sent to Brussels. Our plan for 2018 is to finish the year by exceeding the 50 percent of the financial envelope that we have at disposal through PNDR, envelope that amounts to 8.1 billion euro," Potor specified. 

He said that "besides the very honorable percentage" we are heading towards, of over 50 percent, this will place Romania at the top of the European absorption level in terms of nominal value.