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Levan Davitashvili briefs on future endeavors of Georgia’s unified agricultural and rural policy
The joint sitting of the Parliamentary Budget and Finance, Agrarian Issues, Sector Economy and Economic Policy, Environmental Protection and Natural Resources, Regional Policy and Self-Government committees hosted a candidate for Minister of Environmental Protection and Agriculture of Georgia, Mr Levan Davitashvili to elaborate on the Ministry’s upcoming endeavours.Mr Davitashvili briefed on an extension network, which complements capacity building, sharing knowledge among farmers and entrepreneurs; free consultations are easily accessible at every municipality. The Ministry will elaborate a registry of agricultural-rural lands and land fund databases. Financial and technical expertise will be assigned for cultivating perennial crops.
“We are entering the European Neighbourhood Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development (ENPARD). Special programmes will be deployed to stimulate rural-based young farmers and entrepreneurs, as well as female farmers and entrepreneurs. The ENPARD efforts entail further improvement of agricultural insurance program; aspiring to improve access to financial services, as well as primary production, processing, storage-realization processes – efforts will be fostered to provide cheap and affordable financial means to physical and legal entities; moreover, Georgia will support enhancement of agricultural-rural cooperatives program, which will complement shaping competitiveness of agricultural staff. We are working on a new legislation, which will be focused on establishing the farmers’ association. Enhancing agricultural-rural value chain through prolonging co-financing of processing and storage enterprises; enhancing co-financing of greenhouses for stimulating non-seasonal agricultural-rural production.
The Ministry for expanding co-financing on agricultural-rural harvesting machinery for ensuring accessibility to the latter; meanwhile, aspiring to shape resilient systems for tackling pests and natural disasters in agricultural-rural field – Georgia will boost the quality and fertility of Georgian agricultural products. We shall embrace harmonization of Georgia’s food safety, veterinary sanitary and phyto-sanitary systems with the European legislation, as set forth in the DCFTA” - Minister Davitashvili stated.
A candidate for Minister of Environmental Protection and Agriculture of Georgia, Mr Levan Davitashvili stressed out increasing access to hydro-ameliorated lands, enhancement and development of irrigation and drainage systems; also, Mr Davitashvili dwelled on the fact that special interest will be professed toward strengthening aquatic sustainability of sea and inland waters.