At this point, the agriculture has a much better chance to make some money than it had 14-15 months ago. Serbia has a big opportunity. Two million people in our country are in agriculture, 700.000 families.
Half of them with only agriculture, and the other half along with another work. When two million people make food in a country like Serbia, every agricultural politics has the components of a social politics.
In the last few days a lot of fuss was made about the loans of wheat to Srbijagas from the state reserves. Is it, in your opinion, normal that the government should make such deals?
The buffer stocks are known for loaning goods to which they are doing business with, which has an economic excuse, because they pay the warehouse space for the goods they are dealing with – wheat, corn, oil derivates and others.
The buffer goods have very few of their own warehouse capacities, especially for grain. So the buffer stocks have been functioning, since their making till today, in the way that a specific amount, in this case of wheat, is given as a loan and when a certain period passes the goods are given back to them.
Something else I also know is that the Buffer stock for such a deal always beforehand get all the means of security set by law, primarily banks guarantees. So, I don’t think that the state’s interest is threatened in any way there.
Different manipulations are possible there; the good is taken when the prices are higher and given backs when it is lower. Secondly, not everyone can get a loan, which gives reasons to suspect corruption.
For these three and a half months I have not come across any problematic things in this area. Like all other institutions where the government is the founder, the work of the Buffer stock is on display for everyone to see. Though, there is a certain confidentiality of data in one part of the work, but that is, of course, under the control of the government.
When we are talking about the job with the Fertilizer plant, it also wasn’t an unnatural situation because the Buffer sticks enable for the fertilizer to be given to the agricultural manufacturers at a slightly favorable conditions. Of course, I don’t have to say it – everyone that broke the law should pay for that, but that is not the job of the Department of agriculture.
That sounds good, but it is well known that the level of corruption in Serbia is very high and that is a system corruption. Is it possible, even with you being here just 3 and a half months, that there is no corruption only in the agriculture?
Corruption is a matter for the prosecutor’s department and the courts. As for this department, I can only say that we will in any case that there is an indication that there is corruption give all the documentation that the authorities ask from us. But, our business is not corruption, it is known who the authorities are, and it is best that everybody does their job, and not meddle in other people business like this.
Why were there no auctions for fertilizers? You know that there were a lot of complaints, because Victoria took a big piece of the cake?
This year a decision was made to distribute the agricultural budget in a slightly different way, or to put a much greater stress on loans for the agricultural manufacturers. We opened a space so that, besides the registered farms, the loans could be given also to the entrepreneurs and small agricultural companies.
Those are loans in dinars, of five millions in three years, with a constant rate of eight percent. Those are the cheapest loans that exist today in Serbia.
You saw that we had a pretty heated debate about the measures which is the biggest stance in the budget, on subventions of 14.000 dinars an acre, which includes the fertilizer too. So, there was simply no more money for an additional recourse of fertilizer. Though, I think that measure gave good results and that, thanks to it, the price of fertilizer was lower.
Many small firms protested and claimed that the auctions actually created the monopoly and raised the price of fertilizer higher than the price of it in the market.
That is completely untrue. I cannot go into the details of the processes and procedures which were implemented then, because it is not contemporary now, but I haven’t seen that someone questioned the legitimacy of those procedures.
Also, I think that the price of the fertilizer was lower because that measure was taken, and I would like to see the argument for a different viwe of it.
Do you think that the remittance to the retirement fund should be the criteria for receiving a subvention?
It is not possible to enforce this measure in a different way, because of the sum of money that is available in the budget. If every registered agricultural farm had the possibility to receive a subvention of 14.000 dinars up to five acres of land and with not paying the Retirement Insurance Fund, that expense would be 14 billion dinars, and the entire agrarian budget 20 billion.
But why does the subvention need to be 140 Euros? It could be lower than it would be available for everyone.
It wasn’t possible to change the agricultural politics in the middle of the year. We had big problems with stepping out in the direction we intended to go. Creating space for subsidized loans in the amount of 2,7 billions made a real fuss because it was necessary to make a certain kind of redistribution of subvention funds.
That measure, 14.000 dinars an acre, cost the budget over 12 billion in the last year. The idea for the agricultural loans is, actually, to make the agricultural budget triple. It is 20 billion, with 2,7 billion in loans we have generate a bankers capital that can reach even 40 billion.
We will see, of course, how it will all look in the agricultural world. It started a couple of days ago and the first results are encouraging. To start such dramatic changes of the agricultural politics in the middle of the year, simply wasn’t possible or sustainable. You saw the reaction of the farm workers to these changes.