Of the 175 million euro allocated from the IPARD fund for the period from 2014 to 2020, Serbia spent only 7.5 million and there is a strong risk that part of the money will not be spent, but will have to be returned to IPARD.
So far, calls for the allocation of 130 billion euro have been announced, and since December 2018, not a single euro was paid out. In May 2019, about 300,000 euro were disbursed to various beneficiaries.
This was said today at the online debate called “Agriculture and Investments in Serbia”, held by the European Movement in Serbia, in cooperation with the EU Delegation in our country.
As Jasmina Miljković, from IPARD, said, progress is recorded, but it is slow and a lot of money remains to be spent. “We are now working on changing the programme which means transferring the money to those segments (measures) for which there is interest,” Miljković added.
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In regard to farmers, they were mostly interested in using IPARD funds for the purchase of tractors, while companies applied less for the funds.
Out of 1,437 requests in eight public calls, 86 per cent, or 1,235, were farmers, and only 202 were made by companies.
(Vecernje Novosti, 22.09.2020)
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