|
Government Tries to Help Farmers
Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development held a conference Wednesday morning in Ha Noi to discuss and find solutions to the current problems of farmers.
Mr. Nguyen Xuan Duong, vice director of the Ministry’s Animal Husbandry Department, stated that recently farmers have faced a lot of obstacles.
First, the increase in the price of input materials, especially feed, veterinary medicines and breeding animals, has brought about another rise in the price of adult animals when they were sold back to the market, said Mr. Duong noted. It also reduced the earnings of the farmers, he added.
“Secondly, dangerous diseases have not yet been disinfected completely and always threaten a come back to do more damage,” he added. “Moreover, this news has made both farmers and consumers more worried about the quality of food products.”
Farmers have faced various obstacles in their work, including a lack of premises used for breeding animals and processing products, a lack of electricity and high-interest loans from banks, according to Mr. Duong.
The Ministry has proposed some temporary solutions which will be carried out promptly to protect the economic interests of farmers.
The first solution is that the Ministry will promote reproductive methods to farmers, sell them low-price breeding animals and seeds and economize in using materials for breeding and save input costs.
The second proposal is that ministry will adjust import and export activities to balance import with export and encourage farmers to continue their work.
The last and most important factor is that an action to push the import tariffs on the breeding products back to the rate set by the World Trade Organization.
”The tariff of the imported breeding products is much lower than expected. In particular, when joining WTO, Viet Nam undertook to reduce the tariff of three products, buffalo meat, cow meat and pork from 20, 30 and 40 percent to 14, 25 and 40 percent respectively,” said Mr. Hoang Kim Giao, head of the department. Currently, a 12 percent tariff applies on buffalo and cow meat while imported pork has is subject to a 20 percent tariff.
Since the tariffs on imported products are much lower than expected, domestic products are not competitive on the market. According to Mr. Giao, an action to increase the tariff on imported products back to the expected level would help domestic products strengthen their competitive position in the market and also help farmers avoid losses.
SGGP
|
