Subsidies for transportation of agricultural products may be cut.
According to the Decree of the Russian Government, in order to support producers and suppliers of agricultural products, a special program has been created, according to which part of the cost of transporting goods is subject to compensation.
The amount of compensation reaches 50%, but not more than 30% of the value of the cargo.
Transport subsidies have been issued since 2017 and, for example, last year their volume amounted to more than 1.7 billion rubles.
For 2020, under the program, it was tentatively foreseen to allocate 2.32 billion rubles for these purposes.
Subsequently, meeting the manufacturers and carriers, who suggested that this amount would not be enough, the limit was increased by another 2.67 billion rubles. and in the end amounted to more than 5 billion rubles.
But, as of July 26, only 309 applications for compensation were filed for a total of slightly less than 2 billion rubles.
Unclaimed subsidies can lead to the fact that their size for the next year may be cut.
The amount of compensation for 2020 was determined in February 2020, just before the start of the coronavirus epidemic, which led to the breakdown of transport chains: the logistics of internal and external communications were broken, stocking of warehouses took place.
Epidemiological measures in China, for example, have stopped the movement of millions of containers worldwide.
There was a global drop in the volume of goods in all countries.
In addition, there is one important point in the distribution of subsidies: they relate to rail, road and water transport.
Accordingly, shipping by sea is not compensated.
And this despite the fact that many cargoes go exclusively by sea. And for exporters it is much more profitable than transportation by other means of transport.
For example, recently, trial consignments of meat were shipped to China by rail. But tariffs for transportation of refrigerated containers are 40% higher than shipping by sea.
In this situation, even with state support, transporting goods by rail is less profitable than without subsidies by sea.
But, no matter what happens, by July 7, exporters need to inform the Ministry of Agriculture how much of the money allocated for subsidies, they can realize before October 1, in order to tentatively determine the amount of subsidies in 2021.
