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Foreign trade data for January-February 2022, showed that exports of fertilizers for agriculture increased by over 1400 percent, at a time when imports had fallen sharply, compared to the same period last year.
During January-February 2022, according to INSTAT data, ALL 1.1 billion of fertilizers were exported compared to ALL 62 million in the same period last year.
Meanwhile, imports in the same period decreased by 59%. In January-February 2022, ALL 459 million were imported from this product that serves as a raw material in agriculture from ALL 1.1 billion that were imports in the first half of 2020.
Market sources said that traders are re-exporting stocks and supplies to Kosovo and Serbia due to lack of interest in the domestic market. The abolition of subsidies and the imposition of VAT on inputs, combined with the high prices of fertilizers in international markets made purchases by Albanian farmers unaffordable, the same sources explained.
While the opposite happened in the region. The governments in Serbia and Kosovo increased the subsidy for agriculture, so the countries had a higher demand for fertilizers this year. Barriers to supplies from Russia and Ukraine increased demand for Albanian fertilizer stocks, which could not be sold in the domestic market.
The data reflect the dramatic situation that Albanian agriculture is going through when due to high costs, farmers this season have carried out less planting in both greenhouses and fields.
According to the calculations made by the agricultural expert Ilir Pilku, from 2019 to 2020, the price of one kilogram of DAP increased by 86%, urea by 117%, fungicides by 33%, insecticides by 33%, inorganic fertilizers by 17% and etc. Mr. Pilku said high input prices increased the cost of producing one kilogram per greenhouse by 41 percent. To produce one kilogram of tomatoes in the greenhouse in 2022 costs 41 lekë from 28 lekë that were in 2019.
Earlier this year, the government took two measures to the detriment of agriculture.
First, the agricultural producer compensation rate from 6% became 0%.
Second VAT 10% of the supply of agricultural inputs, such as chemical fertilizers, pesticides, seeds and seedlings, in addition to hormones classified in codes 2937 of the Combined Nomenclature of Goods, from zero percent by the end of the year 2021.
According to agricultural experts, these fiscal measures against the agricultural sector were taken in a difficult period as the prices of raw materials were rising, while the prices offered for agricultural products were at best the same or lower.
The incentives were removed at a time when the government had not thought of a new compensation scheme for farmers causing many of them from high losses not to plant for the new season.
Abandonment of the greenhouse, even if only one season, creates a big gap in the entire agricultural chain and later requires double costs to replant./Monitor
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