Russian Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, front, will back up the national choice of consumers by budget money.
Photo: ITAR-TASS
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Govt to Replace U.S. Poultry by Agrarian Subventions
First Vice Premier Viktor Zubkov will announce new agricultural subventions of 21 billion ruble a year today. A portion of money will go for poultry support. Yesterday, Russia expressed readiness to terminate a few of the WTO agreements, and the supplies of the U.S. poultry to Russia will be curtailed as a result.
The concern of today’s meeting of the agro-industrial commission of the RF government will be the surge in the agricultural subventions. First Vice Premier Viktor Zubkov will chair the event that is held in a day after the sitting of the government’s presidium. At that sitting, PM Vladimir Putin committed the bureaucrats to ensure protection of Russia’s agricultural producers en route to the WTO.
Therefore, the government will additionally appropriate 21 billion ruble a year to the agriculture in 2009 through 2012. Of this amount, 8 billion ruble will be allocated for extra subventions to buy fertilizers, 9 billion ruble will go to develop dairy (5 billion ruble) and meat (4 billion ruble) industries, 2.3 billion ruble is to be spent to subsidize credit interest rates and 1.7 billion ruble will be spent during the grain interventions of the government.
Preparation of today’s sitting of the government’s commission started before the conflict in South Ossetia, which made Russia’s way to the WTO even more thorny, and the bureaucrats will focus on decisions that Putin ordered to elaborate during his May trip to Esentuki, said the source with the RF Agriculture Ministry. But the WTO will be also in the limelight, he specified, pointing out that negotiations with the United States on material reduction in imports of the U.S. poultry are expected to start in the near term.
According to Renaissance Kapital analyst Natalia Zagvozdina, the size of Russia’s poultry market is estimated at 3.5 million tons ($9 billion in retail prices), and import accounts for $2.7 billion to $3 billion.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 27, 2008
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