We must not forget about food security, say the deputies of the Auyl party, speaking about the abolition of subsidies in agriculture. They said that reducing the volume of subsidies could lead to a decrease in the industry's indicators, which have been steadily growing in recent years. And providing farmers with only preferential loans could negatively affect investment attractiveness, the APK News agency reports.
"There are a number of unresolved issues in agriculture. Firstly, the debt of unpaid subsidies to farmers is very worrying. The need this year amounted to 359.1 billion tenge. The Ministry of Agriculture prepared a corresponding application in August of this year, but the debt remained in many regions. The debt as of December 18 amounted to 256.8 billion tenge. When will the tendency to leave debts for next year stop?" - said deputy Zhiguli Dairabayev.
He noted that today the situation with farmers is difficult. Peasants were unable to sell grain, the prices for which fell. Meanwhile, they need to pay off their debts to quasi-public sector organizations, and the issue of extending these debts is not being considered. However, this is very important for farmers.
The second problem. Recently, the government has often discussed the issue of ending subsidies, but we must not forget about safety, the deputies noted.
“Over the past 5 years, average annual growth rates have been noted in crop production in agriculture. Thanks to support, gross output in livestock farming has increased by 15.9%, and amounts to 4.3 trillion tenge instead of the previous 2.3 trillion tenge,” Dairabayev noted.
According to him, last year the investment program amounted to 103.3 billion tenge, and the volume of investments amounted to 353.5 billion tenge. Consequently, 1 tenge of subsidies brought 3.5 tenge of investments to the industry.
“If we reduce the amount of subsidies, will we lose the given indicators?” the deputies are concerned.
They believe that providing farmers with only preferential loans can reduce competitiveness and negatively affect investment attractiveness.
"How then to solve the issue of attracting as many investment funds as possible? Or do you completely exempt farmers from taxes?" - asked the deputies.
This is where the third problem arises, they continued. The head of state announced the volume of preferential loans for agriculture. He gave a specific task to the Government - to allocate 1.5 trillion tenge. However, in order for the delivery of funds to farmers to be timely, the deputies are forced to once again raise the issue of creating Agrobank.
"Deputies of the "Auyl" faction have always raised this issue and found support from other colleagues. However, although a working group was created to consider this issue, the matter is progressing insignificantly," the deputies said.
Considering the issue of the effectiveness of Agrobank, they got acquainted with the work of Aiyl Bank - an industry bank of Kyrgyzstan. According to the results of 2023,
banks received 86 billion soms of net income, Aiyl Bank became the leader of these indicators, with 5.5 billion soms on its account.
“Why is such an innovation not taken into account by our government? Or is it the lobby of the bank owners?” - the deputies asked.
The fourth problem. The problem of developing the insurance system.
“The state allocated 2.5 billion tenge from the republican budget to subsidize the insurance of crop and livestock production last year. However, only 142 agreements were concluded. Currently, there are more than 300 thousand different forms of ownership in the country. The share of insured farmers is less than 1%. This indicates a major problem with insurance. For example, in Italy, France, Spain, 79% of farmers, and about 63% of agricultural land is insured. This is world experience. Why are we not working in this direction? ”- the request noted.
Deputies believe that the main reasons for the low demand for insurance in Kazakhstan are insufficient government support and the lack of a culture of consumption of insurance products. Also, the rules developed by the industry ministry have legislative weaknesses.
"Do you have plans to improve the insurance system?" - asked the deputies.
There has been no response to this request yet. It was addressed to the country's Prime Minister.