By Easter, the Ministry of Rural Development and Food aims to activate the Farmer’s Card for the year 2024, while, as YPAAT and bank officials confirmed to “YX”, the basis for this activation will be the IASD declarations of the year 2023 (s.s. instead of the IACS declaration 2024), since there has been a delay in aid payments concerning the Eco-schemes.
In ddisposal of the banking institutions are now the necessary elements of OPEKEPE, in order to subsequently activate the Farmer’s Card. Besides, the Organization had committed to take all the actions required from its side to “run” the process. According to information from Domokou, the details (rights) of the producers based on the EAE 2023 were transferred to a special application – to which banking institutions have access.
Based on the IACS statement 2023 the advance payment
Therefore, the first advance payment through the Farmer’s Card will be made based on the Basic Aid paid to the producer until the end of December 2023 and is expected to be completed in a second stage with another amount after the credit and payment of the Ecological Schemes.
It is recalled that the “Farmer’s Card” is an important financial “tool” through which farmers, who are entitled to a Community subsidy, can collect the funds they are entitled to from the bank they work with.
“We are ready to proceed with the activation of the Farmer’s Card for the year 2024 and we are waiting for the green “light” from the FSAAT. The credit limits are determined by the ministry. The amount that will be given to each farmer through the card will be calculated on the basis of the IACS statement of the year 2023″, a high-ranking bank executive told “YX”. As last year, in the context of the new CAP which is already in force from 1/1/2023, taking into account that the amounts of aid linked to “greening” are replaced by others, it is expected that the banks will be given the possibility of granting any additional limit, when the process of its final declarations for IACS 2024 will be completed.
For those farmers who did not make use of the Farmer’s Card in 2023, it will be predicted again this year that banks will also accept new requests for a Farmer’s Card with the presentation of the 2024 Single Support Application (IAS) and as soon as it is possible to complete its submission.
The farmers wait anxiously
Farmers, for their part, are anxiously awaiting not only the activation of the Farmer’s Card, but also the remaining aid payments that are pending.
As they emphasize, the need for liquidity is increased during this period to cover costs for the cultivation of fields and the care of livestock farms (seeds, sprays, fertilizers, purchase of animal feed, medicines, etc.), but also the current payment obligations (ELGA insurance premiums, rural electricity payments, irrigation fees, etc.). “The strengthening of liquidity is necessary to be able to cover the current expenses which are many at this time. We are waiting for the payment of aid to be completed, as well as the ELGA compensations for last year’s damage to our crops” said Tasos Chalkidispresident of the Veria Agricultural Association.
It is noted that last year the Farmer’s Card was activated in mid-April, in 2022 it was available to producers in early February, while in the years 2020-2021 the activation took place in mid-March.
Nervousness in banks
However, the identification of significant errors in the calculation of the Rights for the year 2022 causes significant concern for the involved bodies. Already, the OPEKEPE has appointed a special working group to evaluate the problemwith the most likely result being the recalculation of the 2022 rights.
If, ultimately, the Agency’s concerns about the magnitude of the problem are confirmed, the changes in the value of the 2022 Rights iand inevitably involve those of the following years (2023, 2024)to an extent that significantly increases the insecurity for the issuance of the farmer’s Cards, which has apparently created “nervousness” in the banking institutions involved.
