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Agriculture : Legislation targeting aid payments to farmers and modifying ADS activity, adopted by Government
The Government adopted, in its meeting on last Tuesday, an emergency ordinance amending the Law on the Agency of State-owned Land (ADS) and other legislation aimed at granting state aid to farmers for the period 2011-2012, announced Agriculture Minister Daniel Constantin.
'Today, an emergency ordinance was approved amending the Law on ADS activity by which - as normally happens in all European countries - the collection of royalties will pass to the Ministry of Finance. This is the main change the law amending ordinance brings', said Constantin, at the end of the Government meeting on Tuesday.
Also, Constantin said that the Government passed a series of legislation pieces focused on granting state aid to farmers, and the value of national direct payments to be granted in the vegetal sector.
'After you all assisted to the budget revision on Saturday, which was approved by emergency ordinance, at the level of he Government, and the Ministry of Agriculture received, as well, an amount of 400 million lei, in addition to the Agriculture budget, today we have adopted a series of legislation pieces that establish the destination of this amount, on one hand, and, on the other, complete the forms of support granted this year to the farmers', Constantin said.
He stressed that the Executive approved in its meeting on Tuesday a Government decision amending HG 975/2011 regarding the approval of state aid granted to farmers for the period 2011-2012.
'Mainly, we have earmarked additional funds for bird welfare. If the initial budget was 346,895,000 lei, with an allocation of another 86 million lei we reached a total budget of 432,895,000 lei, thus reaching the maximum ceiling set by the European Commission for this year. According to this government decision, we also supplemented the funds for welfare and protection of hogs, so that another 48 million lei came to this form of State aid, in addition to the 207 million lei already allocated', Constantin explained.
At the same time, the Minister of Agriculture informed that another piece of legislation, adopted by the Executive in its Tuesday's meeting, is the Government decision establishing for 2012 the amount of complementary national direct payments granted to agriculture and the plant growing sector.
'Basically, this year, we have two categories of beneficiaries when it comes to the payment per agricultural surface. A category qualifying for European support, support from the state budget and the 'de minimis' measure granted this year - after receiving all farmers' applications - we have a total of 527,000 beneficiaries, which this year will receive a cumulated support of 176, 66 euros per hectare. The second category - the difference up to 1,072,000 farmers, who have applied for surface aid this year and who qualify just for the European support and the one from the state budget - will receive this year an aid of 154.66 euros per hectare', Minister Daniel Constantin pointed out.