`Substantial` EU aid for agriculture

The European Commission has approved "substantial" aid to Malta to enable the government to start implementing its programme to strengthen the agriculture sector before accession, agriculture Minister Ninu Zammit said yesterday.

He said the assistance consisted of €3.2 million (Lm1.25 million) for projects forming part of the rural development plan, €150,000 for disease control in herds and €150,000 for the setting up of a paying agency through which the aid package for farmers would be implemented. The commission is also considering providing financial and technical assistance in viticulture.

Mr Zammit told the annual meeting of the PN committee at Mgarr that thanks to this financial assistance, the drawing up of the rural development plan could be completed by the middle of this year and it could start being implemented from next year instead of 2004, as originally planned.

The minister referred to the government`s aid package for farmers, saying the Lm70 million programme, spread over several years, would make it possible for the agricultural sector to be restructured and for farmers to have a fair income even as product levies started to be lifted.

The aid packet would be discussed in the EU accession talks and the government hoped part of it would be financed by the EU itself.

Mr Zammit said Malta had not received pre-accession funds under the EU`s Sapard programme because the Labour government had frozen Malta`s membership bid. The programme provides €520 million in aid to applicant countries for the period 2000-2006.

Opposition agriculture spokesman Noel Farrugia, speaking in a radio programme, said it was not true that food prices for consumers would drop with the lifting of levies. Once Malta joined the EU, it would be required to lift levies on products which amounted to 25 per cent of demand but it would have to impose levies on other food products and raw material for the food industry imported from non-EU countries.

These products accounted for 75 per cent of food imports. Such levies, affecting 626 products, would have to be imposed even though these products were not grown or produced locally.

Malta currently imported such products from non-EU countries because they were more expensive in the EU.