Prime Minister Edi Rama continued his open dialogue tour with a meeting with local farmers in the village of Dvoran, Korça region, the major apple producing area accounted for largest share of the overall orchard production in the south-eastern region and a main contributor to the significant growth in the Albania’s agricultural exports. In 2022, agriculture sector and Albanian farmers have received the highest government subsidies and funding of over $50 million under the national agriculture support scheme, the tax-free oil scheme, with the oil quantity delivered to farmers increased four times compared to a year ago, whereas the number of beneficiaries has doubled, as well as the ways to cope with the challenges this sector is facing during this unusual time caused by the ongoing war.
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Prime Minister Edi Rama: Thank you very much for the hospitality in this so inspiring oasis! I am very pleased to be in Korça today, because I have repeatedly highlighted Korça as an example offering both sides of the coin, like in every other region, with one side of the coin featuring farmers who take to the streets to throw their apples as shown via the deformed stories of TV channels telling half-truths that are often the biggest lies, as their daily food served to our citizens, because the whole truth is completely different. The farmers who show up throwing their apples away after failing to sell them are not actors, but real people, real farmers that make their efforts, but who fail. However, this is just one part of the truth. The rest of the whole truth represents a much larger number and a majority of farmers, who produce, collect and successfully export their apples and sell their production in the domestic market.
I would provide some facts.
Currently, Albanian agriculture is the most stable one compared to other countries in the region and Albanian agriculture has recorded the highest growth rate after being involved in the Open Balkan initiative also to help farmers, livestock farmers and to assist the agricultural and agro-processing enterprises to access more markets. If Albania’s agriculture recorded a 1.5% increase, North Macedonia’s agriculture grew by 0.1% only, whereas Serbia minus 5.4%. According to the World Bank’s September report, which provides an in-depth insight of the effects of the crisis in all the countries WB operates, Albania has currently the lowest inflation rate of the food products compared to other countries in the region, as well as the European Union member states.
The rise in the food prices in Albania is almost half of the verified increase in the food prices in other countries in the region, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro and so on. These are facts. These are not opinions! These are facts showing the sector’s growth, on one hand, and the Albanian government policy, on the other hand, to relieve burden on the household consumers and the small businesses by maintaining the pre-crisis electricity price rates, with the state budget funding the rest of the cost. In more concrete terms, the electricity bill sent to your homes and to every Albanian household contains just 20% of the real electricity prices, whereas 80% of it is paid by the state budget for every single electricity bill as of today. This measure has helped to maintain inflation rate under tighter control compared to other countries in the region.
Further on, it is important fact to share with you that this year, Albanian agriculture and farmers have received the highest government subsidies and funding of over $50 million under the national agriculture support scheme, the tax-free oil scheme, with the oil quantity delivered to farmers increased four times to around 8 million litres compared to a year ago. In the meantime, the number of beneficiaries has doubled. Likewise, a growing number of farmers have benefited from the programmes and the funding injected to the national agriculture support scheme, apart from the tax-free oil scheme, is around $34 million.
The EU-funds absorption capacities have also increased. Albania used to rank bottom in the regional ranking in terms of absorption of the EU funds, as we failed to absorb a single EU-funded project. Albania today tops the regional ranking for its capacities to absorb EU funds, also thanks to the current Agriculture Minister, who used to head the Agricultural and Rural Development Agency and who built an institution that stands by the farmers, and therefore more than 500 new investment projects have been implemented in agriculture. These investments, worth over 180 million euros, have been implemented throughout the territory of the country and serve not only the farmers involved in these investments, but serve development of this sector. Under the new programme, we have made available a fresh financial capacity of around 150 million euros that will allow us to boost support and increase the number of agricultural collection and storage centres, increase the number of the agro-processing units, as well as the refrigerating and storage capacities, so that we can increase the products value and so that the decision-making to put products up for sale in the market is a decision independent from the conditions or the impossibility of storing products in the refrigerator and sending them to the market at the best price possible.
The last figure and fact I would like to highlight is that the alleged abandoned agricultural sector, the abandoned rural areas where people are struggling to make the ends meet, as reported by the TV channels, until September have actually exported agricultural goods with an estimated value of 57.9 million euros more than during the same period of the previous year. The exports growth is reflected both in value and quantity. More than 50,000 metric tonnes of agricultural products have been exported to the EU member states and to a wider region.
If we look into these figures deeply it would turn out that fruits and vegetables export accounted for 37.6% of the total volume of agricultural exports. These are the figures, these are the facts. However, this doesn’t mean we are satisfied and that agriculture is thriving.
It is no longer enough that we just export apples. On the contrary, we should build a processing industry chain, as around 20% of the production has yet to reach the market or be exported after 80% of the total apple production has been already sold out. The remaining 20% of the total production can be processed to produce apple compote, jam and marmalade and juice.
Just imagine, Albania’s agricultural exports amounted to around 120 million euros only when we took office, but agricultural exports are expected to be valued around 500 million euros until the end of this year. Albania’s agricultural exports are set to amount to half a billion euros now, a country where farmers were totally abandoned until a few years ago only. And you know this quite well; a country where the largest area of agricultural land was barren and uncultivated, whereas the area of cultivated land in Albania has doubled. There are still fragmented uncultivated land plots and that’s why we should take some new measures, already being prepared, to impose a hefty tax rate on the barren agricultural land areas. We can’t afford to leave agricultural land uncultivated just because someone owns it. One has to decide to cultivate the land or lease it. A network of collection and storage centres have been established and are operational all over Albania, but their number should increase further.
These are more or less the issues I wanted to share with you, stating that we are really proud of you, because after all the national pride is nothing but the result and the outcome of what all the people of this country jointly achieve for their own homeland and what you do is to the benefit of not only your own families, but the country too. This is not only because you contribute to the population’s food, but also because you set a significant example that though working in agriculture is really hard, it is still rewarding and it pays off much better than working for others abroad, let alone launching agritourism businesses.
Thank you!
