Shamil Vahitov: the problem of the bank credits’ prolongation should be solved urgently.

The active first deputy Prime-Minister of Government RB, active Minister of agriculture RB Shamil Vahitov raised the problem of payments on the credits of the Republican agrarians in connection with the substantial damage because of the drought before the heads of the Republican credit institutions. The active Minister of agriculture told about measures, undertaken for liquidation of the after-effects of the severest drought.

Bashkortostan faces the unfavorable climatic conditions in the course of two years. The death of the crops on the area 1 million 239 thousand hectares, registered in 2010, adversely affected the economics of local agriculture. According to the latest information the damage will make up more than 13 billion rubles. 1893 agricultural enterprises and farmings have suffered from the drought in total complexity. The Government of Russia is working up the order of grain supply from the special intervention fund, prolongation of the credits and lease payments. The delay of payments for the term up to three years is planned.

One more measure for the support of agrarians is the commodity interventions. The decision concerning sales of the intervention grain is already reached. The government will allocate the five-year credits with the subsidizing of the interest rate but here there is one more problem – since the majority of the agrarians already have enough credits, they have no assets on the security of new credits and now Russian Government is searching for the way out of this situation. Bashkir budget allocated more than one billion rubles for overcoming the after-effects of the drought. The question concerning allocation of new funds is under consideration today. It is planned to allocate the three-year credit under 2% of interest per annum but this work is found on the state of document preparation.

Shamil Vahitov accented the attention on the problems, which should be solved urgently. First of all, this is the prolongation of the bank credits. It is clear that now the agrarians aren’t able either to pay the main debts or pay the interest rates back. The only source of money for them now is the sales of meat and milk but because of unfavorable weather conditions the production of cattle-breeding comes down. No grain sales of a new harvest are planned because the available grain will be redistributed to the trans-Ural districts, so the agrarians won’t face any incomes because of its sales too.

The head of the Ministry of agriculture RB suggested the interest rates on the already given out long-term and short-term credits should be lowered, because some credits were given out under 17-18% of interest per annum.

“I’d like all of you to display understanding” –Shamil Vahito said to the bankers – “Some big agricultural enterprises face certain problems on the completion of the investment projects, developed with the attraction of long-term credits. Some of these projects can’t reach the planned project capacity now and it means the agrarians can’t pay their debts to the banks. The credits on such projects should be prolonged too in order to avoid the bankruptcy of our farmings. These questions have to be solved urgently”.