Kostanay farmers fear disruption of field work

Even the large farms of the region do not have enough money to carry it out, farmers say. Bank loans come late, and some can not get subsidies through the new portal, even with the seventeenth attempt, reports the World of NAN, referring to inbusiness.

Kostanay farmer Alexander Borodin has been in this business for over 30 years. He has a solid and large farm, but even he will have a hard time this spring. Low grain prices are forcing the agrarians to turn to credit, but they cannot get it in time.

"In general, for the spring field work credit is not enough for everyone. Many farmers complain. Why is there still no money allocated for spring field work, particularly credit resources? I am not even talking about the fact that subsidies are not allocated in full," says Alexander Borodin.

The issue of subsidies is an obstacle to agriculture. The new platform through which farmers apply for state support has made their lives even more difficult. It takes weeks and months to figure it out, and in spring every day counts. They are outraged: the new portal gosagro.kz was introduced despite farmers' protests.

"They were vocalizing saying, 'Please leave Koldau. Leave Koldau until this program gets into the right track. They didn't hear us, they said it was another ministry's program. Look, two ministries can not agree among themselves!", - agrarian Svetlana Mikhailenko is indignant.

The Department of Agriculture says that they themselves asked to leave the old portal qoldau.kz as a paid and well-tested alternative to the website gosagrо. But in January the new system was launched. For example, 13.4 billion tenge was allocated for investment subsidies. However, officials have concerns that farmers will not get this money in time.

"The new program works, as any young program, neither rash nor shaky. With systematic stoppages it works, with systematic updates, in the process of which the system does not work. The speed is snail's pace. We will request these funds, but here the next problem arises - will we use these funds in full?", - said Aslan Dosmaganbetov, head of department of agriculture office of Kostanay region.

There is a catastrophic shortage of specialists to process applications from farmers. Plus the gosagrо system, which is not fully worked out, constantly creates work. For example, because of the lack of a button "Reject application" one of the Kostanay peasant farms has applied for subsidies 17 times, and officials had to consider the application 17 times.

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