FSBK: Ministry of Agriculture conditions the subventions

The Agricultural Federation Trade Union of Kosova (FSBK) accused the Ministry of Agriculture for giving false promises, as it has promised many subventions to farmers and, according to this trade union, they are only false promises that are never realized. However, the Ministry of Agriculture said that the reason that subventions are not given now, but only after the autumn sowing deals with prevention of misuses.

These comments were made today by the head of Agricultural Federation Trade Union of Kosova, Tahir Tahiri, who accused the Ministry of Agriculture for conditioning the low number of subventions with different conditions to farmers, who already have many cadastral problems since the former communist system to present day.

“We have informal information that the Ministry of Agriculture has made it more difficult to get the right for subventions. For example, the minimum of sowed area must be 2 hectares, as well the sowed areas to be digitalized in order to carry out verification with LPS system. These criteria are unacceptable for farmers and FSBK, as vast majority of farmers have problems with ownership of lands, as a weakness of communist system and other cadastral difficulties that occurred after the war,” Tahiri said.

Whereas, the Ministry of Agriculture gives its reasons on implementation of some criteria, which are opposed by FSBK, by saying that the reason that subventions are not given before autumn sowing is that it would enable misuse of these subventions, because, according to this ministry, in last year’s inspections there were found 30% of areas that had not meet the conditions for subventions.