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Levan Davitashvili: "Agro insurance is a tool to make agriculture more predictable and investment in the agrarian field even more attractive"
The candidate for the Minister of Environmental Protection and Agriculture, Levan Davitashvili underlined the importance of the agro insurance project and drew his attention to the success achieved within the project.
Agro insurance is a tool that makes agriculture more predictable and investments implemented in the field even more attractive. The risk is an important aspect of the farming sector not only in Georgia, but in the rest of the world as well, therefore, without agro-insurance, it will be difficult to attract investments in the agricultural field.
Georgian model of agro insurance is successful, although, it certainly needs a further improvement. The Ministry is actively working in this direction. Our goal is to create a two-tier insurance system that will allow farmers to reimburse the cost of the harvest. This will ensure to attract and engage even more farmers in the program. As a result, we will be able to lower the insurance premium. Under the current scheme, the 100 gel return-of-premium insurance promises to refund 103,8 gel, which definitely refers to the effectiveness of the insurance program. This means that the amount paid exceeds the amount spent by the state.
However, this case doesn’t include administrative expenses, which is about 25% of the insurance premium. Although expenses and financial aid provided by government would be even greater, if administration of insurance policy was implemented by the state, instead of private insurance companies. Consequently, the state is trying to promote the development of the private insurance industry ” Levan Davitashvili said.
The ministerial candidate, Levan Davitashvili has been focused on the sectoral programs.
The Ministry will further continue to allocate grants for perennial crops within the co-financing projects. The aforementioned projects will contribute to the development of the tea sector and production of vegetables in Imereti region.
In addition, the equipment used for the harvesting process was co-financed by the state as a grant and delivered to farmers under the pilot program. The project will be continued next year as well. Grant support includes all types of machinery, especially small-scale agrotechnology, which is in great demand among our population.
The support to beekeeping farmers and agricultural cooperatives will be continued to improve infrastructure, technical and expertise services. It should be noted, that we are starting to apply a complex approach to support the development of livestock sector. Due to the limited resources in this sector, we had not had any grants in the previous years.
Interventions. For several years, we have closely cooperated with donor partner organizations, in particular IFAD and USDA, which started to implement a total of Gel 36 million projects in Georgia. Moreover, these projects include retraining programs for farmers, therefore, significant grants might be allocated under these projects in the future ”said Levan Davitashvili.