ArmInfo. There is a demand to develop regulations, which should be aimed at sparking the interest of farmers to raise farm cooperatives, stated Ignaty Araqelyan, the Minister of Agriculture, at the budget hearings in Parliament on November 2.
He mentioned that currently villagers are not interested in joining the cooperatives, because they are not aware of future benefits. Meanwhile, it is exactly the large farming that opens the opportunities to develop the agrarian sector. "It is right with this purpose that we are going to initiate in December the discussions on variations and modifications to the "Law on Farm Cooperatives", Minister mentioned.
Arakelyan noted also that in 2017 the subsidization of fertilizers and diesel fuel for farmers will be continued despite the fact some of the farmers still have unpaid financial dues to the budget, because they failed to pay for the fertilizers, supplied with lower prices previously. He did not rule out either that court trials may be initiated in respect to some of them . "There are some that are simply unable to pay, and they, most probably, will be denied fertilizers and fuel," he accentuated.
To recall, according to the information shared by Atom Djandjoughazyan, the Deputy Finance Minister, 14 projects in agricultural industries will be funded with 8.5 bln AMD during 2017. Following Djandjoughazyan, the sector costs will decrease by 2.4 bln AMD in comparison to those of the current year.
About 3 bln AMD has been allocated to the agricultural sector from the state budget funds in 2016. The diesel fuel demand is estimated at about 6 mln liters, and the Government is going to cover the 330 mln AMD of the amount mentioned. The fuel is being purchased at a price of 335 AMD per liter, 70 of which covered by the Government. Beside that, until the end of the year it is planned to utilize around 2700 tons of fertilizers. The government has allocated 760 mln AMD subsidies for fertilizers purchase. Fertilizers are delivered to farmers at the price of 6,000 - 7,000 AMD per pack.
