Republic

Belarus’ agricultural companies to get Br35.2bn in preferential loans to rebuild onion storage facilities

This year Belarusian specialised truck farms will receive Br35.2 billion in loans for rebuilding onion storage facilities and building energy-saving boiler houses for them, BelTA learnt from Alexander Autko, Director of the Horticulture Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. He said, the allocation of the money is laid down by the Belarus President’s decree No. 368 “Measures to satisfy demand for fruits and vegetables”. In particular, the loans for reconstructing onion storage facilities will be given to municipal unitary agricultural companies Vostok Factory (the Gomel region), Sovkhoz Dubovitskiy (the Buda-Koshelevo region), Nivy (the Zhlobin region), agricultural manufacturing cooperative Druzhba-Avtyuki (the Kalinkovichi region) as well as municipal unitary agricultural company Komarovichi (the Petrikov region), Svetlogorsk Vegetable Factory and pedigree factory Berezki (the Gomel region). There are plans to build energy-saving boiler houses in municipal unitary agricultural companies Teplichnoye and Brilevo of the Gomel region. All the companies are Belarus’ backbone producers of vegetables, including onions, ready to fully satisfy the home market demand. According to Alexander Autko, the loans will allow fitting the onion storage facilities with contemporary equipment to maintain a certain temperature, thus keeping the merchandise in a mint condition through the year. Along with onions the facilities will be able to store other vegetables and seeds. This year’s onion harvest in Belarus is expected to make at least 40,000 tonnes, with 10,000 tonnes to be stocked for the out-of-season period. The problem of the absence of modern vegetable storage facilities is very topical. Some stock is lost due to the lack of special equipment, forcing the producers to sell a lot in autumn. In line with the decree the loans will be provided on preferential terms. They are supposed to be paid out between January 1, 2009 and January 1, 2011. The better part of the loans and some interest payments (as much as half of the refinancing rate of the National Bank) will be covered by the National Agricultural Producers Support Fund, which will use money allocated for compensating for losses of the banks that issue preferential loans to agricultural companies. The borrowers will have to pay the remaining half of the NBB’s refinancing rate and a 3% interest margin. The borrowers have to accomplish major goals outlined by the national social and economic development guidelines in 2007-2010 in order to have the main debt and some interest rate payments covered by the National Agricultural Producers Support Fund.