Budget 2024/ Agricultural funds are cut by 9%, less funding for farmers

2023-11-02 07:32:00, Ekonomi CNA

Budget 2024/ Agricultural funds are cut by 9%, less funding for farmers

Illustrative photo

In the 2024 budget, the agriculture sector will receive at least 9% less funding than this year's plan finalized in the normative act for amending the 2023 budget.

The data from the tables accompanying the 2024 draft budget show that the total funds for the Ministry of Agriculture will be 14.1 billion ALL in 2024, from 15.6 billion ALL this year (see the attached table).

There have been big cuts in the funds allocated to farmers and rural development. The support measures for agricultural production and rural development will be 7.1 billion ALL from 10 billion ALL this year with a 28% reduction or about 25 million euros.

This decrease is a big blow, at a time when the European Union has also blocked funds from the IPARD scheme due to the corrupt affairs it has found with the allocation of funds in our country.

In contrast, the funds for planning and management have increased by 22% and those for food security by 36%.

At a time when the government has reduced funding for agriculture, it expects the sector to grow by 2.8 percent and employment to increase further over the next two years.

The countryside has been emptied by emigration and internal movements, the Ministry of Agriculture expects to increase the number of employees in this sector to 568,000 employees in 2026, from 565,954. Most of the employees in the sector are without salary, since 80 thousand farmers in the whole country themselves pay insurance.

Albania financed the agricultural sector by an average of 0.19% of GDP during the years 2020-2021. According to a World Bank comparison, this is the lowest level in the Region and in the EU (see attached graph).

In the same period, EU countries financed agriculture with 0.35% of GDP, while three countries of the Region, Serbia, North Macedonia and Kosovo had higher financing rates in relation to EU agriculture GDP.

Only Albania stands out as a country in the Region with a low level of agricultural support for agriculture, which at the same time is the sector with the largest weight in GDP with about 19% of it.

Most of the public spending on agriculture in the Balkans is used for direct payments.

In countries such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Serbia, the weight of direct payments to farms reaches 70-80% of agricultural budgets, most of which is related to livestock production or the use of inputs.

In Albania alone, more than 70% of the agricultural budget goes to operational expenses of the bureaucratic apparatus and only a small part to direct support to farmers./ Monitor Magazine