Friday, September 15 2017 18:33

ArmInfo. The process of buying grapes started in Armenia, the first batch of which was purchased by the Armavir branch of the Yerevan Brandy Factory. Minister of Agriculture of the Republic of Armenia Ignatiy Arakelyan familiarized himself with the process of the start of the procurement campaign, who, prior to his appointment as minister, headed the YWF.

Ignatiy Arakelyan, accompanied by Governor of Armavir district Ashot Kahramanyan and chairman of YWF Council Ara Grigoryan, went around the enterprise, watched the process of works.

A number of factories, including the Proshyan Brandy Factory, the company "Armenif Vine" have already started buying early grapes for production of cognac and wine, however, full-fledged purchases began from today. At the Yerevan Brandy Factory, the process has started, other companies are also ready to purchase.  109-110 thousand tons of grapes will be harvested in 2017, "Ignatiy Arakelyan told journalists. In order to exclude all suspicions and provide reliable information on the instructions of the Armenian government, all information on the volumes of harvested grapes will be collected, and the State Service for Food Safety will compare These data with the volumes of wine raw materials. The subsidization by the state of loans from the enterprises-procurers of loans for the purchase of the vine harvest will greatly assist the entire procurement The minister stressed that he will ensure that the funds received by those companies that purchase raw materials directly from farmers, enterprises that have their own gardens, the loan will be refused, monitoring and strict control will be carried out for this purpose. Companies wishing to take advantage of preferential loans, according to the minister, will determine the value of the grapes to be acquired by companies and farms in accordance with the agreements concluded between them.

The Chairman of the YWF Council Ara Grigoryan noted that starting from tomorrow the process of grape purchases will begin in the branch of Aigavan of Ararat district, and from September 20 in the branch of Berd of Tavush region. "In the current year, we will purchase 30 thousand tons of grapes, there are no problems with financing, we will start paying payments for the grapes purchased today," the chairman of the YWF Council said. Ara Grigoryan added that the purchases are carried out exclusively on a contract basis.

Previously, ArmInfo reported that the company allocated 4 billion drams for the purchase of grapes.  Staying true to the long-term practice of timely payments, this year the company will also make payments to each winegrower within 3-4 days after the delivery of the grapes. The price for one kilogram of grapes will be 130 AMD for all branches of the enterprise. Note that earlier the price that operated for the Berdsky branch was lower by 10 AMD due to the low saccharinity of the grapes of this region. This year the company also continued the program of interest-free credit granting of pesticides, the total amount of which amounted to over 266 million AMD. It should be noted that in the framework of the program, winegrowers cooperating with the plant could receive all necessary pesticides as an interest-free loan, covering arrears during the delivery of grapes. The YWF will also continue introduced in 2013, the Program of multi-year contracts, the total number of which at the moment is 453.