Tbilisi: After the end of the government session held today, Otar Shamugia spoke about the details and importance of the new state co-financing programme of agricultural equipment for agricultural cooperatives.
“Before I go into the details of the program, I would like to give you information about the actions we have done over the years to support the procurement for agricultural equipment. We realize that access to technology is very important for our farmers.
That is why, in recent years, we have co-financed almost 70 million GEL in the form of programs, which have benefited more than 2600 farmers; including, in the year 2022, on the initiative of the Prime Minister, 50 million GEL was paid.
Under this co-financing programme alone, the purchase of about 1200 units of support equipment were funded. In this direction, we, every year, have included co-financing in the budget. Several weeks ago we announced applications for co-financing of harvesting equipment.
The process of reviewing the incoming applications is now underway. About 60 beneficiaries will receive funding for harvesting equipment, including critical harvesters. We have 10 million GEL allocated in the budget, which we will apply under this program, – Otar Shamugia said.
The new program, whose budget is 10 million GEL, will be an additional opportunity for farmers to get new agricultural machinery, which will be able to perform various agro-technical tasks by meeting international standards and corresponding agro-harvesting.
The program applies to all municipalities of Georgia except for self-governing cities. Registration for the program will begin in March this year.
As the minister noted, the program envisages co-financing of equipment for agricultural cooperatives under the following conditions: the number of owners of the cooperative must be in a bar, not less than ten, and they must own not less than 20 ha of agricultural land.
In the case of high mountains, these numbers will be halved – the number of lands should be five and the area of agricultural land should be 10 ha.
Co-financing within the program will be provided within 50%, and with the rest of the money the cooperative and its payers will have the opportunity to use a lucrative agro credit program, where the state will provide subsidies.
