About 250 million euros are expected to be invested in Macedonian agriculture by 2027 through the new instrument for pre-accession assistance in the field of agriculture and rural development IPARD 3.
This was announced at today’s online debate at the 9th session of the Working Group 1 for Agriculture and Rural Development within the National Convention for the European Union in North Macedonia on topic “Challenges in the programming and implementation of the IPARD 3 program (2021-2027)” , debated by Macedonian and Slovak rural development experts.
“The value of the IPARD 3 program, which should be adopted by the end of the year, is estimated at about 97 million euros from European funds, which together with the funds from the national part become about 125 million euros.
“If we know that this is 50 percent of the total investment that enters through the projects covered by the IPARD programs, we can conclude that about 250 million euros are expected to be invested in Macedonian agriculture in the coming period,” said the head of the IPARD Management Body at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Economy, Zivko Brajkovski, who presented the IPARD 3 program.
According to him, unlike IPARD 1 and IPARD 2, the third IPARD program envisages several innovations. Some of them will increase the efficiency and utilization of funds from the IPARD program, namely the introduction of advance financing, introduction of a new category of beneficiaries joint legal entity Increase of the minimum investment thresholds, increase of the minimum procurement amount through three independent comparable bids from 10,000 to 20,000 euros and from three to two bids, as well as start of project implementation immediately after application, without waiting for the signing of contracts as until now.
The participants in the debate warned that the removal of barriers to the implementation of the IPARD 3 program will be extremely important.
“The implementation of this program is not an easy task,” said the national coordinator of NKEU-MK and a President of European Movement, Mileva Gjurovska, adding that farmers should focus on agro-ecological production in accordance with the common agricultural policy of the European Union, but even more necessary” to create favorable conditions for this sector to become more attractive to young people. “
The outflow of young people is also a problem in Slovakia, which has far greater experience in implementing programs funded by European funds.
“One third of young farmers are leaving rural areas, so we are trying to bring them back and keep them through campaigns,” said Marek Pihulic, an expert on rural development evaluation programs in the Slovak Republic and a member of the Slovak Rural Development Network. . He said, however, that European funding from IPARD programs had helped maintain a good share of employment and modernize and increase on-farm productivity.
Researcher from the Slovak Foreign Policy Association (SFPA) from Bratislava, Peter Brezani, on the other hand, pointed out that the National Convention is a good platform through such debates, and especially through the recommendations of experts arising from them, to help the authorities implement them more effectively. IPARD programs, bringing them closer to the real needs of farmers for modernization and modernization of this sector. “This broad platform,” he added, “contributes by exchanging views of experts but also stakeholders on recommendations to become part of public policy and take institutional form.”
As a special recommendation for the manner of implementation specifically of the IPARD 3 program, it was pointed out that structural conditions should be provided and the correction of the property-legal aspects and the technical documentation necessary by the municipalities and the Government should be performed.
“The process of adopting detailed urban plans in the municipalities must be accelerated with specific deadlines and the documentation for projects involving construction activities must be processed faster, especially the legalization requests intended for the use of IPARD,” said Biljana Petrovska-Mitrevska from the National Federation of farmers.
Regarding the other barriers in the implementation of IPARD programs from the Agency for Financial Support in Agriculture and Rural Development, they pointed out that one of the biggest challenges is the lack of human resources and retention of staff in the Agency, works under great pressure and is subject to 5 audits by the state and the EU. They pointed out that retaining staff in the Agency should be in the focus of the Government, as there are currently 28 people missing, who have gained rich experience with the implementation of the previous two IPARD programs.