Illegal cereal trade has decreased by 70- 80 pc after the country introduced reverse taxation.
Romania now has 8.4-8.6 million hectares of arable land, not 9.5 million hectares as it once had, Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Valeriu Tabara stated yesterday during a seminar, Mediafax informs.
“Over 1,000 hectares of arable land have disappeared in every county from 2002 to 2008,” Tabara said, pointing out that the data was gathered as part of the agricultural census. According to the Minister, some of that arable land was used for all kinds of constructions. Moreover, Tabara also pointed out that Romania could cultivate sugar beet crops on 150,000 hectares, in contrast to the 20,000 hectares on which it currently does so. Thus, in future years the cultivation of sugar beet crops will be stimulated by the use of sugar beet in the production of ethanol. At the same time, he underlined that the production of vegetables has grown this year and by around 2020 the amount of harvested wheat should grow by 40 per cent as compared to its 2010 level, reaching a level of 8 million tons. Half of that amount would be exported. In 2010 Romania’s production of wheat stood at approximately 5.7 million tons. At the same time, a growing consumption of agri-foods and a growing demand for food exports are forecast for this year.
Moreover, illegal cereal trade in Romania has decreased by 70 or 80 per cent after the country introduced reverse taxation, Nicusor Serban, vice-president of agricultural producer association LAPAR said, yesterday. He also added that applying reverse taxation on cereal will yield good results if the state observes the 30-day deadline to refund VAT. Tabara also claims that 80 per cent of farmers’ markets are owned by speculators and that in many Romanian cities farmers have to bribe certain groups of people in order to have access to those markets. During the same seminar, the Minister warned the farmers that improperly apply farming technology and those that fail to cultivate their land on time that they will no longer receive subsidies.
