The Russian government has decided to allocate an additional 17.5 billion rubles from the budget to agricultural producers.
Preferential lending is one of the most popular measures of state support among farmers, so demand for such lending almost always exceeds supply.
Initially, approximately 209 billion rubles were allocated to subsidize preferential loans this year, including 28 billion rubles for new short-term loans.
However, as of October 15, almost all of this amount had been spent: the remainder of the subsidies from banks that have the authority to issue preferential loans amounted to only 800 million rubles.
Including 320 million for the development of crop production, and less than 100 million for livestock farming.
In September, First Deputy Minister of Agriculture Elena Fastova said that farmers were expecting additional funds from the government.
This has become even more relevant due to the fact that the Central Bank of the Russian Federation has raised the key rate several times this year, and at the moment it is near record levels in recent years. Therefore, many producers are simply unable to obtain market loans, and preferential loans are the only thing they can hope for.
At the same time, there were also doubts that additional funds would ultimately be allocated.
The reason is simple: the Russian budget is already in deficit, so there are not many funds in it to allocate additional support.
But, despite this, the government still decided not to leave farmers without support and to allocate another 17.5 billion rubles for preferential subsidies. These measures will affect those engaged in the production and processing of crop and livestock products.
As noted by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, the government expects that such a measure will subsidize at least 24 thousand borrowers.
«We expect that such a step will improve the financial stability of the agricultural sector so that in the future it will successfully fulfill the tasks of food security, providing our citizens, first of all, with the widest choice of high-quality domestic products,» he said.
The government is also allocating an additional 6.5 billion rubles to issue subsidized loans to rural residents.
The rate is up to 3%, which is much lower than the market rate, which is currently around 20%. Rural residents can attract preferential loans to take out a mortgage, as well as to repair or improve their home, connect water or gas.
