Romania has a governing programme that must be put into practice, yet we are dealing with package after package, to the point where the entire country has become a package, said on Monday the Director General of the Agency for Financing Rural Investments (AFIR), Adrian Chesnoiu, at the launch event of the new edition of the "White Paper of Romanian Agriculture".
"I often hear in everyday life: 'We do not have strategies.' But we simply need to implement them. It is our habit to constantly reinvent the wheel, to build during the day and tear down at night - the myth of Master Manole, which in the end does not hold. We have a governing programme, we must implement it, but we keep adding package after package after package, until all of Romania has become a package. We have strategies ... a minister comes in with his own strategy. He leaves, the next one brings his own strategy, and so, every six months or every year, we change strategies. We do have contextual elements and analytical data to rely on, but we need to base our public policies on these data," Chesnoiu said, agerpres reports.
According to him, a sound public policy, designed for the benefit of those concerned, was undone by a "not particularly fortunate" political decision - namely, the decision to drop the support for taxes in the agricultural sector.
"The reduction in salaries, or the 20-25% gap between wages in agriculture and the national average in other economic sectors, also comes from scrapping the tax support for the agricultural sector. We introduced these measures in 2022, and salaries aligned, the gap between agricultural wages and the rest of the economy narrowed, and then, once this fiscal facility was removed, inequalities deepened again. This is a very good example of a consistent, needs-based public policy designed for beneficiaries, followed by a political decision that was not particularly fortunate and that, unfortunately, harms us. Of course, there were considerations related to the NRRP, which has, I believe, become the most overused word in our daily vocabulary," he explained.
The AFIR head expressed hope that, together with the Ministry of Agriculture, IMM Romania, and programme beneficiaries, a short-, medium- and long-term agricultural strategy can be outlined, implemented, and able to deliver the expected results.
"I would like to congratulate you for what you have achieved, for what you usually do, including through all the conferences you organise, beyond the White Paper dedicated to agriculture, because (...) at the National Council of SMEs you dedicate a large part of your activity to the agricultural sector. This shows that you are well connected to the large number of enterprises in the sector and, why not, to shaping more coherent public policies that will bring the benefits farmers expect in the future," added Adrian Chesnoiu.
IMM Romania launched on Monday the second edition of the "White Paper of Romanian Agriculture", whose purpose is to assess the current state of agriculture and identify the main challenges and opportunities for the coming years.
Comentează