Ministry of Trade: price fixing will be detrimental to farmers

Yerzhan Kazanbayev, Chairman of the Committee on Trade, said what assistance is provided to commodity producers and business entities in order to reduce and stabilize food prices, World of NAN reports referring to the press service of the Ministry of Trade.

Yerzhan Kazanbayev noted that trade chain consists of producer-logistic-shop. The margin of each is limited to a minimum of 10%. Each of them bears the costs, which need to be compensated.

In addition, last year's drought, a sharp rise in the price of spare parts, fuel and lubricants, fertilizers and pesticides lead to additional costs for producers.

"A producer cannot sell below the cost of production. 40% of the population lives in the countryside and feeds the city. Lower the price below production and there is a risk that our farmers, the villagers, will be left without income," said the chairman of the Trade Committee.

Delivery from the field to the city is also a cost: fuel, depreciation of cars, etc. The store has costs for electricity, rent and wages of workers. Therefore, fixing prices for a long time will hurt all the people who work in the field of production and trade of socially important food products.

Taking into account all factors, state agencies are working to stabilize prices by applying market mechanisms and to reduce prices - through support of commodity producers.

In this regard, to support entities of agro-industrial complex we are working on increasing of concessional loans to farmers from the national budget through the "Ken Dala" program in the amount of up to 140 billion tenge for cultivation of crops, including production of early vegetables and socially important goods. The issues of providing agricultural producers with cheaper diesel fuel for the spring field work are being addressed. Also, the Ministry of Agriculture is working systematically on import substitution of main types of food products.

To recall, for systematic solution to existing problems in pricing, Ministry is working on creation of National commodity distribution system in the form of infrastructure of WDC network, which will consist of 24 facilities.

As it was noted the aim is not to build 24 storage facilities, but to create a complete system infrastructure of the full cycle - from producer to retail. This will significantly expand the market for agricultural products and create a separate economic cluster, which will bring the producer closer to the consumer.

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