The payment of the advance by the Ministry of Rural Development and Food has begun
The Ministry of Rural Development and Food announced the crediting of 70% of the advance payment of the Basic Support to a total of 538,768 beneficiaries.
The amount to be paid to the producers, after the integration of the audit findings, the transfers, the offsetting of unduly paid or other commitments was set at 488,384,809.32 euros. As stated in the announcement of the FSA, based on what is included in the approved Strategic Plan of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP):
- The total basic aid foreseen for 2023 is 829 million euros compared to 1,068 million euros in 2022. The difference of 239 million euros has been transferred to redistributive aid (178 million euros), new coupled aid and sectoral programs and will be paid later.
- Of these, the initial calculation of the payment based on the submitted IACS applications of 2023, started from 741,813,749 euros, 70% of which corresponds to 519,269,910 euros.
- Pasture lands, declared by the beneficiaries, as pastures in good agricultural condition, in order to be eligible for aid, can only be achieved by declaring livestock. For this reason, as of 2022, no National Reserve has been allocated to pastures without animals. This fact was the main reason for the seizure of these beneficiaries, their non-payment and ultimately the reduction of the total amount of the payment of the basic aid by 14.5 million euros.
- In the above amount of 14.5 million, we must include a cumulative 16.7 million euros in addition to impairment due to findings stemming from regulatory law (e.g. royalties below 150 euros that are not paid) and other findings, such as natura areas, control by monitoring, etc.
It is also emphasized that for those producers who have outstanding issues in today’s advance payment of basic aid, OPEKEPE will announce on Monday, October 30, 2023, clarifying instructions.
At the same time, in the near future, OPEKEPE will make the following payments through gov.gr:
– Payment of agro-environmental measures for the year 2022 of approximately 20 million
– Advance payment of agro-environmental measures for the year 2023 of approximately 180 million (end of November).
– Payment, before the Christmas holidays, of the Basic Aid, the Redistributive Aid and the Equalizing Compensation, amounting to approximately 650 million euros.
In total, these payments will reach 850 million euros.
