The president of the Cabildo, María Dolores Corujo, has announced that a line of direct concession subsidies has been launched for the primary sector with the aim of facing the "disproportionate increase in prices that both fuels and cereals and fodder have suffered" as a result of the war in Ukraine.
"The criminal invasion of Ukraine is causing the death of thousands of civilians and the alteration to unsuspected limits of the living conditions of millions of people. In addition, and in a second order of importance compared to the dramatic consequences suffered by the population of Ukraine, the effects of the war and the sanctions imposed on Russia hit the world economy with special impact on the price of fuels and cereals and fodder, leading to an unsustainable situation for the primary sector in the face of which the Cabildo must act and will act", explained the president.
Corujo affirms that these measures will have to be adopted "both by the European Union, as well as by the governments of Spain and the Canary Islands, which have already begun to act, but with the intervention of the Cabildo as the closest administration".
For the moment, she explains that the Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Andrés Stinga, has held several meetings with representatives of the affected sectors, agreeing with them on the main measures to be adopted to deal with this situation.
Among the agreed measures, the first will be the implementation "as a matter of urgency" of that line of direct aid to the island's primary sector, whose processing "has already begun" and which will mean, according to the Minister, "an initial volume of aid of two and a half million euros that may be expanded depending on how the situation evolves".
Likewise, and always in accordance with the representatives of the sector, the Minister has transferred a whole battery of proposals addressed to the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries of the Government of the Canary Islands that contains measures such as new extraordinary lines of aid and improvements in the POSEI and the REA, as well as proposals of a fiscal nature and improvement of supply, in addition to the implementation of a Canary Islands Forage Plan, which they consider necessary to give a new boost after it was paralyzed in 2015".
"We are going through a complicated situation to which we must give a concerted response, counting on the sector. For this reason, I have committed to holding periodic meetings in which to carry out the essential monitoring of the measures we are putting in place", concluded Stinga.