OREANDA-NEWS. March 18, 2011. Prime Minister Vlad Filat chaired a meeting on the situation in the farming sector today, the government's communications and press relations department has said.

Attending the event were representatives of agricultural associations, among which: the UniAgroProtect Republican Union of Agricultural Poducers' Associations, Union of Wine Producers and Exporters, Fruit Producers' Association, AGROINFORM Federation, National Farmers' Federation.

At the beginning of the meeting, Agriculture and Food Minister Vasile Bumacov said that important reforms were carried out in agriculture over the last year, impacting positively the development of the branch. The minister specified that, in 2009, the farming production was of 13.3 billion lei in real prices, noting that this index hiked by 6.4 billion lei in 2010, standing at 19.7 billion lei in all.

Among the immediate priorities of the agriculture's restoration, the minister named the creation of post-harvest and processing infrastructure, full involvement of the science in agriculture and more efficient use of the money received from different international projects and programmes.

Representatives of agricultural associations said that the permanent dialogue with the government, the prime minister personally and the agriculture and food minister, along with the actions meant to unblock the accounts of agricultural enterprises, the liberalization of exports and resumption of subsidies for phyto-sanitary goods were favouable for farmers. They stressed the need to continue the process of restoring the agriculture, highlighting the importance that the state subsidize promising farmlands.