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Tuesday, May 14, 2013 Romania has so far drawn nearly 5 billion euros worth of the European Union funds earmarked under the National Rural Development Programme, with such money having effectively entered the beneficiaries’ accounts and having been repaid by the European Commission, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Daniel Constantin told AGERPRES in an interview on Monday. ‘Last year, the absorption under the National Rural Development Programme amounted to 3.7 billion euros and today it has reached 5 billion euros. We’ve recorded 1.3 billion euros increase over a year and I think it is a significant increase, for only one programme, the more so since the money has been paid the beneficiaries and repaid by the European Commission to Romania’, Constantin stressed. He underscored that his ministry, last year, managed to get an additional 100 million euros, given that the Romanian agriculture was hit by a droughty span and 6 billion lei was injected via the Agriculture Payments Agency. ‘We managed to get an additional 100 million euros to the ministry budget last year, an unprecedented fact since 1989. The Government has proved it is concerned with the agriculture not only when harvesting the crops, there are collections to the budget and we have economic growth. The fact we gave 100 million euros in a year when we did not have a very good crop was a very good signal for me, I think, but for the farmers first and foremost. This year we finalised all the payments via the Payments Agency in only two months, namely March and April, which means there was an inflow of six billion lei to the Romanian farming, although I would say it was to the Romanian economy, because such an amount was invested and bolstered the consumption and also the payment of taxes and duties to the budget. If things look well now, it is also due to the money inflow via the Payments Agency. It is for the first time that the Agency manages to pay all the funds it had available so fast’, Constantin explained. According to figures supplied by the Agency for Rural Development and Fisheries Payments (ADFP), European funds for investment projects amounting to 17.92 billion euros had been claimed by end-April, with around 141,000 projects having been filed. The funds committed via the National Rural Development Programme for the rural area’s development total 5.21 billion euros, while there are as many as 65,193 contracted projects for being financed by EU funds. As much as 4.94 billion euros has entered the beneficiaries’ accounts, with 2.78 billion euros of it being for investment projects and 2.16 billion euros for the compensatory payments made by the ADFP. Continue reading →