The State Food and Consumer Service will be transferred to the Ministry of Agrarian Policy in September - EBA

The State Food and Consumer Service will be transferred to the Ministry of Agrarian Policy in September - EBA

The State Food and Consumer Service will be fully transferred to the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food in September 2021.

This was announced by the European Business Association (EBA) following a meeting of its representatives with the HEAD of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy Roman Leshchenko on July 16.

According to the minister, it is not planned to “break” the functionality of the State Food and Consumer Service between the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and the Ministry of Economy, in whose control the department is currently located.

The EBA cited the minister's data, according to which the key issues for his department are irrigation, soil conservation, state support, a partial loan guarantee fund for small and medium-sized businesses, and the introduction of additional financial instruments for the capitalization of the agricultural sector. According to him, the profile for the Ministry of Agrarian Policy are crop production, animal husbandry, processing of agricultural products, areas related to irrigation - horticulture and the like. In addition, the development of green tourism, viticulture, aquaculture, agricultural engineering.

The organization clarified that the Ministry of Agrarian Policy is also preparing a presentation of the state agricultural register in September, which, among other things, will help to transfer the circulation of warehouse documents for grain into electronic form, since the current “paper” format of document management creates corruption risks.

In addition, the ministry is preparing measures to support producers and processors of dairy products, since today Ukraine has an acute shortage of raw MILK. Also, we are talking about an initiative to reduce the rate of value added tax (VAT) for certain areas of the agricultural sector, the EBA specified.

As reported, in the fall of 2019, the Ministry of Agrarian Policy was attached to the Ministry of Economy, which also received 285 state-owned enterprises, of which 61 were bankrupt, as well as the State Food and Consumer Service and the State Geocadastre. The Ministry of Ecology left the State Water Agency, the State Fishery Agency and the State Forest Agency.

The decision to restore the Ministry of Agrarian Policy was made at the end of 2020.

interfax.com.ua