The Romanian government has decided to compensate farmers affected by the worst drought in the last half century, said in Cluj, the Minister of Agriculture, Adrian Oros. He stated that a total of 1.4 million hectares were declared a disaster by farmers. Already, 859,000 hectares have been checked in the field by the ministry’s inspectors, and by June 15, the Ministry of Agriculture will have an exact situation of the damages caused and the compensations that will be granted, said Minister Adrian Oros.
In this context, the Minister of Agriculture said he was disappointed that the irrigation system could not operate at full capacity, because many rehabilitation works are of poor quality or are not correlated with secondary infrastructure works performed by farmers. Thus, the water actually reaches 310,000 hectares, although the former Minister of Agriculture, Petre Daea, stated that the irrigation system is ready to serve 800,000 hectares. Adrian Oros stated that, in order to restore the irrigation system, the Government has allocated for this year the amount of 238 million lei, but asked that the payments from the public budget, for the primary infrastructure, be correlated with those that will be financed by farmers, for secondary infrastructure.
