2023-05-18 13:16:15
Georgi Takhov
Why with the 16th notification of the PRDP 2014-2020 did the Ministry of Agriculture choose to finance projects under other measures instead of transferring additional funds to submeasure 4.1 “Investment in agricultural holdings” and sub-measure 4.2 for processing and marketing? This question was asked by MP Maria Belova to the Minister of Agriculture during a meeting of the Committee on Agriculture in the National Assembly.
Minister Yavor Gechev came to the meeting together with all his 4 deputies. He was also the director of DF “Agriculture” Georgi Takhov. Directors of directorates were also present. Most of the minister’s retinue failed to get the floor, as Yavor Gechev was apparently aware of 99% of the topics raised by the deputies. Here and there he needed to be given a number and that was it. The meeting was chaired by the previous chairman, Rosen Kosturkov. It dragged on extremely long because of deputies who wanted to get answers to some questions and because of the minister’s eloquence. Finally, Kosturkov even emphasized that when a question is asked with the word “when”, the answer should fit in one sentence.
Maria Belova quotes the letter of 24 organizations that insist instead of using leftover funds from the rural program to fund farmers, the agriculture department wants to direct money to drones to fight hail, university labs and more. Is the 16th notification a fact, asked the MP.
Yavor Gechev answered positively: the notification has been approved. The minister explained that a preliminary analysis was made for the possible loss of funds and where, what is released as funds. He said that he would also like to finance projects of farmers as well as municipalities. However, the given RDP indicators should have been implemented. The analysis has shown that the money that is released, according to indicators, is only in the ecological direction. Therefore, the funds “were redirected to priority axes, which are considered to be the ecological implementation of the given projects”.
“The European Commission has made remarks to the Bulgarian state more than once and twice that our program mainly implements 4.1 and 4.2 and municipal measures, while it has many other such measures,” Gechev pointed out.
He also said that the overbudgeting of municipal and private measures is 130%.
Regarding the specific question of Maria Belova projects from measures 4.1 and 4.2 with how many points will be financed, the floor was taken by the director of the DFZ Georgi Takhov.
He explained that there is still no ranking under the processing measure 4.2, but by the end of May this will happen. The employees are simultaneously working on the documentation from the two intakes under sub-measure 4.2 from last year.
According to measure 4.1, the projects that collected 45 are secure points. He added that the Ministry of Agriculture is expected to finance this measure. If this happens, projects with 41 points and above will be able to be approved.
Read more: Yavor Gechev: There is a risk of losing 100-120 million euros under the PRDP
#Projects #points #measure #chance #financing #Agro #Plovdiv