Agriculture Minister Adrian-Ionut Chesnoiu and Finance Minister Adrian Caciu gave assurances on Friday at a news conference in Bistrita that Romania will not face a food crisis.
Chesnoiu said that it is important that the financial assistance to farmers is timely provided in order for them to stay competitive and ensure a high level of production.
"It is important that we pay the farmers their dues on time. We have completed almost all the payments and, if we make a calculation, it is a value of over one billion lei that has already been paid into their accounts. We try and make all these efforts because the farmers have to remain competitive, to secure a level of production as close as possible to the maximum potential of Romania, because, you see, globally there is talk about food crises. And I want to tell you and I tell all Romanians that Romania is not in such a situation. From that point of view, we are stable in providing the country's population with agri-food products. (...) We can produce food for the country's population and meet the domestic demand," he said.
He added that Romania has the chance to transform itself from the granary of Europe into the "hypermarket" of Europe, by processing raw material itself.
"We should not be worried about food security because food crisis in Romania is unlikely. Food crisis occurs when there is a shortage of food. Instead, obviously, the global geopolitical context will affect us in the sense that new markets are being reconsidered, reconfigured, and Romania's agriculture must take advantage of that because we can conquer new markets and stop exporting raw materials and processing them ourselves instead and selling agri-food products of a high value. I was even telling our colleagues at the conference today that Romania can turn itself from the granary of Europe into the hypermarket of Europe; it can turn itself into that, we only need at least one link in the processing chain to be integrated and we certainly have such opportunity," explained the agriculture minister.
Finance Minister Caciu said in his turn that there will be no food crisis in Romania, but admitted that there will be further increases in food prices.
"We are in a very good position as far as own production goes. (...) You will hear all kinds of analysts claiming that there will be a food crisis in Romania... No: there will be no food crisis in Romania, and that's what I'm telling you as a financier, as an economist and as a person who has worked in that field. Yet, there will be price increases, there you have to come up with support for the public, for households and for companies," said Caciu, Agerpres informs.