Azerbaijan, Baku, August 6 / Trend I. Khalilova /
The Azerbaijani Ministry of Agriculture submitted a proposal to abolish the value-added tax on imports of grain products to the government, the Ministry of Agriculture department for production and processing of plant products head Sabir Veliyev said.
"As a result of the disaster in the Aran (central) part of the country, crop areas were flooded. So, the demand for grain crops will be met due to grain imports. For this reason, the ministry applied to the government to abolish VAT," he said.
Over 76,000 hectares of sown area remained under the water. Azerbaijan will presumably collect two million tons of grain this year. About 1.3 million will fall to the grain.
"The country's needs in wheat hit 1.5 million tons. We plan to cover additional volumes at the expense of grain import, particularly from Kazakhstan", Veliyev said.
Today, the country has enough reserves. About 520,000 tons of grain have been imported to Azerbaiajn since early 2010, 15 percent - from Russia, and the remaining volumes fall on Kazakh grain.
The abolition of VAT will help to prevent a serious increase in prices on the domestic grain market due to the current growth in world grain prices. Since early 2010 Azerbaijan has introduced VAT on imports of grain. One ton costs $480. The tax worth 18 percent is imposed, that is $86.4 per ton of imported grain.
The price per one ton of wheat in the U.S. hits $261, in France - $268, in Canada - $314, in Russia - $ 240.
According to the state program to provide population with food in 2008-2015, the volume of grain production in the country should be at the level of 2.8 million tons a year. But the record was broken last year. Last year, 26.6 quintals of grain, or about three million tons in total, were collected from each hectare of land. In 2010 the land was sown on 147,000 hectares less than in 2009. It is connected with problems of selling local grain of the first class, which is sold at 0,10-0,12 manat per kilogram, Veliyev said.
Local manufacturers of bread prefer to buy imported grain as raw materials at 0,05-0,06 manat per kg, despite that these kinds of grain are of 4-5 class quality, Veliyev said. He thinks it necessary to strengthen monitoring of the quality of bread within the protection of consumer rights.
On August 6, the official exchange rate is 0.8034 manat to $1.