FARMERS and government yesterday agreed on a two-month compensatory plan to offset imminent increases in petrol prices, which prompted demonstration by farmers’ unions last week.
Following a meeting between farmers unions PEK and EKA and the Ministers of Commerce and Agriculture, it was announced that the farmers had accepted the government’s proposal.
However, the farmers made it clear that it was a stopgap measure and warned that if a long-term solution was not found by then, they would escalate measures.
Last Thursday, around 100 farmers gathered outside parliament as deputies decided to postpone the three-cent increase in the price of fuel to give the government time to reach an agreement with the farmers. The farmers were briefed on the government’s proposal yesterday by Commerce Minister Nicos Rolandis and Agriculture Minister Costas Themistocleous.
“It was agreed that additional funds would be returned to the farmers,” Rolandis told journalists after the meeting. “The government has fulfilled the request fully. They said they don’t want to pay this amount and we agreed.”
Themistocleous said the government had satisfied the farmers’ demands one hundred per cent. “I think things are very clear,” he said.
“The government has satisfied the farmers to avoid the additional burden from the coming increases, which cannot be avoided.”
The minister said that details of how the package would be implemented would be ironed out at further meetings this week.
Michalis Lytras of the PEK farmers union said the proposal had been accepted for a two-month period.
“But we insist that fuel for farming purposes should be continuously subsidised,” he said. He said that the system the government would be using to return the costs to farmers had its shortcomings but added that the government was considering suggestions put forward by the farmers to overcome the problems. “We’ll discuss this and make a decision with the agriculture minister, but this is not a solution to the problem,” Lytras said. “This is a solution born out of necessity. Our standing demand is colouring of the fuel and subsidisation so that farmers can buy at lower prices and cut production costs.”
Constantinos Constantinides of the EKA farmers union said it appeared that, with the island’s accession to the EU, farming was on its way to becoming a redundant industry.
“Farmers are disappearing,” he said. “We came out of the meeting with the ministers feeling more insecure than ever. We have entered difficult times.”
A government announcement yesterday said that, within the harmonisation framework, the commerce ministry had called in experts to carry out a study on the rebalancing and liberalisation of fuel prices. The aim of the study is to readjust fuel prices so that they reflect cost and to scrap existing subsidies, as well as to introduce the liberalisation of prices as far as possible.
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