Financiarul

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Rural Development (MAPDR) earmarked 365 million lei (about 85 million euros) for the Payment and Intervention Agency for Agriculture (APIA) in what represents the first installment of the Complementary National Direct Payments to the livestock sector, reads a MAPDR release.

Of the total, approximately 269.5 million lei represent the bonus for cattle holdings, payable to 227,219 cattle breeders who own about 1.3 million animal heads. Of the amount released by MAPDR, about 95.5 million lei represent the per head bonus for sheep/goats. Such financial support is collected by 44,248 farmers for a breeding stock of 6.3 million heads.

Complementary National Direct Payments (CNDP) are granted in the form of the bonus per cattle breeding holding, and of the per head bonus for sheep/goats respectively. According to European regulations, all filed applications and the livestock they refer to (both cattle and sheep/goats) must undergo an administrative control in the National Livestock Holdings Registry (RNE). In addition, a mandatory control and supracontrol on site is required for sheep/goats.

According to Order No. 344/2009, APIA refers to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Rural Development the registry with the headcount eligible for payment in 2009; the deadline for data submission was Sept. 15 for cattle and Oct. 15 for sheep/goats, respectively.

An administrative control was carried out for all cattle-related applications to the effect that a number of 227,073 applications were declared eligible for an inventory of approximately 1.3 million animals.

Controls for sheep/goats resulted into 44,248 applications declared eligible for an inventory of 6,373,000 heads. As many as 233,599 applications were submitted for the bonus per cattle breeding holding for 1,392,195 heads; submitted applications for sheep/goats stood at 45,300 for a headcount of 6,883,902 animals.