Armenian winegrowers may have problems with grapes sale- Kerobyan
YEREVAN, June 14. /ARKA/. There are serious concerns that Armenian winegrowers will not be able to sell all their harvest in 2023, Economy Minister Vahan Kerobyan said at a government Q&A session in parliament today.
"At the moment, the situation is not encouraging: we don't see that the entire grape harvest will be purchased, and we are trying to figure out methods to make ends meet," he said.
Kerobyan reminded that the deadline for grape procurement contracts expires July 1. A big problem, according to him, is the unscrupulous behavior of some procuring companies.
According to him, today Moscow trading networks are offered half a liter of cognac for $1, which is an impossible price for a drink made from wine alcohol.
"This problem needs to be solved as soon as possible. We are working on it now," he stressed.
On apricot procurement, Kerobyan noted that farmers are already complaining about purchasing prices. He drew attention to the fact that other countries are heavily subsidizing exports of apricots, for example, Uzbekistan subsidizes the logistics costs.
"We need to quickly analyze the situation in our domestic market and export markets, find a quick solution and try to ensure that farmers’ crops are procured," he said.
Kerobyan also argued for raising irrigation water prices to make farmers invest in drip irrigation systems.
The minister explained that the government almost entirely subsidizes the cost of water before providing it to farmers, so the price of water that farmers pay for does nothing to encourage them to shift to efficiency systems.
"The investment in efficiency systems for farmers is not justified because the savings are so small that they are not worth the investment.
‘Therefore, in our opinion, water prices should go up so that farmers be motivated to invest in drip irrigation systems," he said.
According to him, to date, the pace of transition to efficient water use systems is unsatisfactory and needs to be accelerated. -0-
