BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 23
Tamilla Mammadova – Trend:
This year, Georgia plans to allocate 130 million lari ($39.4 million) for the development of ameliorative infrastructure in Georgia, Trend reports via EastFruit portal.
“Together with the World Bank (WB), we have approved a new irrigation strategy, which implies the arrangement of this system in a new way, the reorganization of the Georgian Melioration company, and the improvement of a number of processes. This year alone, the country's state budget provides for about 50 million lari ($15.2 million) for land reclamation, and another 80 million lari ($24.2 million) will be financed by the World Bank. The planned activities will significantly improve the irrigation infrastructure. At the same time, together with our donors and experts, we will continue to work on the development of drainage infrastructure,” said Minister of Environment and Agriculture of Georgia Levan Davitashvili.
As Davitashvili noted, since 2012, when there were only 45,000 hectares of irrigated land in Georgia, to this day, the state has invested more than 400 million lari ($121.2 million) in the restoration of ameliorative infrastructure and provided more than 90 thousand hectares with water.
“Irrigation of agricultural lands is an important prerequisite for the development of modern production on them. And the results achieved have already affected the dynamics of agriculture and the interest of investors in this area. The cost of land plots, which are an important asset of farmers, has also increased many times over,” the minister emphasized.
He recalled that as part of the anti-crisis plan last year, all farmers in the country were completely written off the arrears of payments for land reclamation services, which had accumulated in the period 2012 -2019 (about 8 million lari or $2.4 million).
In addition, about 35,000 farms were exempted from payment for reclamation services (agricultural land with an area of up to 10 hectares) in 2020.
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