The NGO "Ukrainian Agricultural Council" appeals against the unfair mechanism for distributing state support to the agrarian sector in court. The District Administrative Court of Kyiv has accepted the suit for consideration and appointed the date of the previous meeting on November 6, 2018.

"According to our belief, the main reason for the failure of this year's system of distribution of subsidies is that the government has practically eliminated the discussion of appropriate mechanisms of state support for agrarian associations representing the interests of the recipients of these funds. We want this claim to ensure that the Ministry of Agrarian Policy, like other agencies, ceases to violate existing legislation when drafting normative acts that directly affect the work of agricultural producers, their income and profitability ", - said the deputy head of the UAC, Mikhail Sokolov.

According to him, despite the fact that in 2018 the government directed to support the agrarian sector 6.3 billion USD against 5.5 billion UAH last year, farmers actually did not see this money. After nine months of the work of the approved mechanism was used a little more than 10% of the total!

Thus, according to the program of compensation of the cost of purchased agricultural machinery of domestic production as of August 20, it was spent a little more than 196.4 million UAH from the allocated 945 million USD.

This year the government directed 4 billion USD for the livestock support program, but farmers received only 488.1 million USD. In particular, only UAH 6.7 million was used under the program to stimulate the growth of young cattle in households of individuals out of UAH 700 million. And according to the program of partial reimbursement of the cost of purchased breeding animals for further reproduction, the funds were not used at all.

In addition, mechanisms for the distribution of funds in 2018 were adopted with a number of violations. The UAC has repeatedly stated this since the beginning of the year. These mechanisms were aimed at satisfying the interests of the largest players in the market through small and medium agribusiness. And this despite the fact that last year's program "quasi-accumulation of VAT", according to which producers received subsidies in accordance with the amount of tax paid, was much more effective. First of all, because according to this program, producers received funds automatically and transparently. Now the profile ministry has again introduced a "manual" mechanism for allocating budget funds.

"The program of "quasi-accumulation of VAT" was not perfect. In the calculation formula, a gross mistake was made through which enterprises that were both engaged in livestock breeding and plant production almost did not receive a subsidy. In the year 2017, the UAC proposed a solution that corrected the mistake and developed a draft new order of distribution of funds. All agrarian associations supported these developments. But instead of listening to the opinions of experts and market participants, the Cabinet reduced funding for this program to zero, and the money was redirected to other items of expenditure that have already proved their ineffectiveness," said Mikhail Sokolov.

The next year, the government plans to continue this year's policy. So, according to the draft budget for 2019, the government plans to increase state support to the agrarian sector to 6.9 billion UAH. Of these, UAH 1.38 billion the Cabinet intends to direct compensation for the cost of purchased Ukrainian agricultural machinery, UAH 1 billion for the development of farms, UAH 4 billion for livestock support and UAH 400 billion for garden development.