One of the main issues of your Ministry is agricultural reform and land privatization. Could you tell us briefly how this has been carried out?
Today in Romania 84% of the agricultural land is in the hands of private owners but this property is very spread out, the average of one agricultural exploration being of 2,3 hectares. The remaining 16% of the agricultural land - 1,8 million hectares - are administered by Commercial State Societies. This is the best agricultural land. The Agricultural State Societies have very big debts at the Commercial Bank, and they are over-dimensioned and badly organized. This is why we decided to privatize them this winter and give back up to 50 hectares to the previous owners according to governmental law. After this, 1 million hectares will still remain in the Private State Domain. This land is going to be on concession for a period of time, up to 49 years to the buyers of the Agricultural Commercial Societies. The reallocation of 50 ha will allow the average surface of individual exploration to increase up to 8,5 ha (today the average in Europe is of 17-18 ha) so there is an objective to accelerate these family-type explorations and raise them to a European standard of 20 ha. The State Private Domain (1 million ha) will be organized in big agricultural explorations of thousands of hectares. The entire agricultural exploration will become private, with the State retreating from this activity. This is happening with a big delay. To be able take advantage of the huge potential of Romania in agriculture, reforms should have taken place in 1991-1993, right after the Revolution because the others links of the economic chain - storage, processing and commercialization of the agricultural products - are already private.
In the past many people who were working the land started cutting down the woods and this created some problems in terms of ecology. Do you think this might happen again in the future?
This is a problem that concerns us, but the repercussions of this action have not been too big. We give back forestland only up to 1 ha at the outskirts of the big woods. It is true that the new law we have just voted for in Parliament says that now we will give back up to 10 ha. The administration of these forestlands will be done under direct and severe silvic supervision and therefore I don't think there will be any danger of ecological disaster or perturbation of the environment because, usually, the owners administer the woods better than the State.
One of the main objectives is the land privatization. How successful have you been so far and what measures have you been taking?
There is also a concern that the market be unregulated, for there to be no control over the prices both at their entrance in the economic process and in their capitalization.
During the process of alignment to the common European Policy we need to apply similar policies on different products of agriculture. That is why even though we do not have a massive funding policy for agriculture, we have some policies that support main products like: wheat, corn, pork and chicken meat, milk. I am mentioning this because Romania is part of the Common Space of Free Commerce called CEFTA where, together with Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovenia we have to apply the same policies to sustain agriculture, otherwise our products will have no chance to stay on the market. We have substantially lowered the tax level and if our colleagues apply a subsidy policy for the export of their products, these will be sold on our market at a much cheaper cost than Romanian products and many product categories will not be able to compete. We had a problem last year regarding pork meat and wheat, which were cheaper from Hungary than from us, but we finally solved it.
One of the main aims of Romania is to be part of the European Union. How do you think that Romanian agriculture will compete in the European markets?
It is true that our main aim is the alignment to the European Union and the Common Currency, and we know that the most difficult file of the negotiations in this alignment is the one of agriculture. We already have a partnership relationship with Brussels - every year specialists from our Ministry take part into a screening in Brussels regarding all the realizations and legislative institutional changes we have undertaken, which have to be consistent with those from the European Union. We know that Romania has a very big agricultural potential - the second in Europe after France. When the same sustaining policies as in other countries from the European Union will be applied in Romania, and when the same financial resources will be allocated to agriculture, we will have nothing to fear about competition with products from the European Union. Under these circumstances, Romania will produce better quality products at a lower cost. | Our products are much closer to the natural ones because we don't allocate as many chemicals for one hectare as they do in Europe. It is traditional for Romania to be an exporter of agricultural products because we do not have such a developed industry as Germany and the countries in the north of the continent. During the process of alignment to the European Union we will emphasize the fact that we are concentrating on the agricultural sector.
What are the improvements needed in the agriculture sector?
First and foremost, Romanian agriculture new machinery and agricultural tools. For example, presently Romania needs 360.000 tractors but has only 150.000. This means that there has to be new investments in agricultural tools. This will be the first level of our necessities of investments.
Another necessity is the acquisition of modern processing technologies of agricultural products - we need new technology to process milk, meat, and a very attractive sector I always present to the foreign investors is that of wines. Romania is the potential fourth producer of wines in Europe after France, Italy and Spain. In the current process of privatization of state companies, the most attractive ones are the vineyards and the companies that make wines like Murfatlar, Panciu, and Jidvei - traditional vineyards. Here we need foreign investments for at least two reasons: the need of new technology to manufacture the wine and the need to open new markets the investor could bring.
You are also minister for livestock, and a number of livestock has dramatically decreased for the past few years. Why is that so and do you have any plans to stop this decline?
It is true that the number of animals decreased in the last years because there was no sustaining and coherent policy from the State to restore the number of animals. We proposed a law regarding the growth of the number of animals that is 100% compatible with the European legislation. Through this law we try to organize all the Associations of Animal Owners and help them with good seminal material. A complementary thing that helps to maintain the number of animals is the capitalization of milk that is not done as properly as it should be. Not all the milk is capitalized, and because of this many people give up on raising the animals if they can't capitalize the main product. Starting this winter we will help the animal breeders, especially those who have milk animals, by allocating to them some subsidies for milk, which has not happened before.
In the year 2000 we will also apply the rural development plan, which will encourage the investments in this environment and the implementation of some processing capacities for milk and meat very close to the rural area and the producer, which will also help the number of animals increase. This plan has a support from the European Union of 150 million EURO per year and from the World Bank of $150 million.
Do you have a final message you would like to transmit to our readers?
I would like to transmit them that the very big potential of the Romanian agriculture can be turned to good account with the help of the foreign investors. So we are waiting for them to come to Romania, we need their knowledge, we need the financial high tides that can be attracted so that this huge potential can be turned into good account. |
The Ministry of Agriculture and Food 