Arkady Ponomarev: “There cannot be any real shocks in agriculture”

In his report the Deputy stressed that the agricultural sector today shows a steady growth - the volume of production over the past 6 years has increased by almost 15%.

"The main thing that I and my colleagues managed to achieve in a difficult economic situation is to protect the budget of agro-industrial complex. In 2018 it will not be lower than the level of the previous year and will amount to 242 billion rubles. In 2017 it was 234 billion rubles, of which Voronezh region received almost 7.5 billion rubles. We hope that this year the region will receive a comparable amount of Federal subsidies. This is a sufficient amount of funds to motivate the development of agro-industrial complex of Voronezh region", the parliamentarian said.

Arkady Ponomarev noted that due to the support Voronezh region takes the second place in the production of sugar beet, the fourth – in the production of sunflower, the sixth — by the gross grain harvest.

"We take the leading position in the production of meat and milk. The growth of agricultural production gives impetus to the development of the processing industry. The range of products is being expanded; the technologies of deep processing of raw materials are being mastered. Due to the state support, the inflow of investments is growing. The regional economy is on the rise. The regional budget last year was executed with a surplus of 7 billion rubles. This means that the Treasury has funds for the development of infrastructure, social payments and salaries, for the implementation of local initiatives", told the parliamentarian about the effect of state support.

Arkady Ponomarev also said that it became possible to include agricultural universities and industrial science into the system of Federal support. The cost of training specialists in the field of agriculture brought to the general level in higher education. The law adopted in co-authorship will allow two Voronezh universities - the State University of engineering technologies and the State Agrarian University named after Emperor Peter I - to equip the training and experimental base on the modern model.

A good help for the development of the fishing industry will be the law on insurance of aquaculture facilities, which will protect the farms from risks, will help to develop the existing potential, commented on his initiative Arkady Ponomarev.

"In order to further regularize the relationship in the chain "producer-retail chain" I and my colleagues in the monitoring group "Fair price" introduced a bill to ban the return products unsold on time to suppliers. It will eliminate the unreasonable costs of producers in favor of retail chains. Together with the relevant departments measures to combat falsification are being worked out. In addition to increased responsibility, it is a question of reconsideration of technical regulations. This applies primarily to the dairy sector: products with vegetable fats should be removed from the scope of the technical regulations for milk", said the parliamentarian about the current legislative activity.

The Deputy also has other issues aimed at the formation of highly developed agro-industrial complex, the development of social infrastructure of the village, the disclosure of the potential of the Russian remoted areas.

"Agriculture today has reached a certain level of development and there cannot be any real shocks in it. The level of technical equipment in this industry is so high that fluctuations can be caused exclusively by weather conditions," concluded Arkady Ponomarev.

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