Bashkiria experience in agricultural cooperation development was marked at Yalta Economic Forum

UFA, 18 April 2019. /Bashinform News Agency, Azat Gizatullin/ translated by Tatiana Aksyutina/.

“Last year, 119 agricultural cooperatives were created in Bashkortostan, and according to this indicator, the republic ranked first in Russia. Cooperation is developing very actively in Bashkortostan, and the republic is a good example for other regions of the country in terms of this system development”, said the head of the Directorate for the Agricultural Cooperation Development of the “SME” Corporation” Elena Dubinchuk at the discussion platform held in the framework of the Fifth Yalta International Economic Forum.

Total, 37.4 billion rubles will be allocated to support farmers and develop agricultural cooperation within the framework of the “Small and Medium Entrepreneurship and Support for Individual Entrepreneurial Initiatives” national project. In the next six years, Bashkortostan will receive more than 1.5 billion rubles for this purpose. The federal project provides for three directions of state support. These include grant support for peasant farms (Agro-startup grant), subsidies for the creation and development of agricultural consumer cooperatives, as well as subsidies for the support of competence centers in agricultural cooperation and support for farmers, who will provide the full range of consulting support.

In 2015-2017, 3.7 billion rubles were allocated from the federal and regional budgets for grant support to cooperatives. 426 agricultural consumer cooperatives received such grants. In total, according to Elena Dubinchuk, 749 agricultural cooperatives are currently operating in Russia.

In addition to state support measures for farmers, issues of selling farm products, their availability at the federal retailers, problems of creating agricultural cooperatives were discussed at the discussion platform.

The Interim Deputy Prime Minister - Minister of Agriculture RB Ilshat Fazrakhmanov said that by 2020 the profitability of cooperatives should increase four times, exceeding 1 billion rubles. In three years, almost 1,500 new jobs are supposed to appear in cooperatives.