It is not the first time Agriculture Minister Daniel Constantin makes big promises in what concerns the bright future of agriculture and rural life. He last did it yesterday, within the Lower Chamber’s Agriculture Commission. Constantin stated that the rehabilitation of the main irrigation infrastructure requires EUR 1 bln over the next five years and a first state budget allocation could consist of EUR 145 M in 2016.
“The main irrigation infrastructure has to remain state property through the National Land Improvement Agency, in order to implement the rehabilitation from public funds, from the consolidated budget. I hope that, once this law [the budget – editor’s note] is approved, we will have the sums stipulated distinctly within the ministry’s budget. We have funds for the rehabilitation of secondary infrastructure for the 2014-2020 period, a period in which all the funds at our disposal, namely EUR 435 M, have to be contracted. I personally believe that they will be contracted in 2016, 2017 at the latest. Thus, by 2020 we will have the entire secondary infrastructure rehabilitated. In parallel, during these five years, it would be better for us to earmark sums every year, so as to rehabilitate the main infrastructure too, one without which it would be very difficult to use the secondary infrastructure. For this reason, bearing in mind that we need EUR 1 bln for the main infrastructure, the proposal we made is for us to earmark EUR 145 M in the first year, in 2016, and the sum to then grow by 17 per cent year-on-year every year,” Constantin said.
The irrigation infrastructure currently services 750,000 hectares but its potential surpasses 2 million hectares.
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