Farmers in Northern and Eastern Kazakhstan are complaining about unpaid government subsidies and low incomes from their harvests. At the same time, the Minister of Agriculture, Aidarbek Saparov, has announced a new approach to financial support for farmers.
As reported by ORDA, he stated that from 2025, the state will stop subsidising interest rates on field and harvesting work. Instead, farmers are to be given so-called "concessional loans" at 5%.
The Ministry of Agriculture believes the new system will simplify processes, but farmers are sceptical. According to them, growing grain is becoming less profitable every year.
"In 2014, diesel fuel cost 125–128 thousand tenge per tonne, if I'm not mistaken. A tonne of grain cost 240–250 dollars. Ten years on: a tonne of diesel costs 283 thousand tenge, a tonne of wheat costs 160 dollars. Let's go back to 2004. The cost of grain was 350 dollars, the cost of diesel was 28 thousand tenge per tonne. Do you see? I say to my father: 'It turns out 2004 was profitable. It only gets worse every year.'" said farmer Daulet Bakishev from Pavlodar Region.
It has emerged that the state currently owes farmers 359 billion tenge in subsidies, of which 194 billion have been approved but not paid out. Majilis deputy Zhiguli Dairabayev asked the Minister of Finance, Madi Takiyev, when farmers would receive their money.
"This 194.8 billion tenge needed to have been paid off yesterday. A proposal for additional funding has been sent by the Ministry of Agriculture to the Ministry of Finance. In this regard, I have a question: will the subsidy debt be paid in full by the end of the year?" Dairabayev asked the Minister.
Madi Takiyev replied that the current debts would roll over into next year, but did not specify payment dates. However, the Minister noted that 400 billion tenge in subsidies is planned for farmers next year.
"We are well aware of the issue you are raising. This is a practice that has continued for many years. We will not be able to pay the 194.8 billion tenge in full by the end of the year. We will try to allocate these funds gradually, not only from the republican budget but also from local budgets," the Minister replied.
In turn, co-founder and managing partner of "Aitas Agro", Talpat Aldazharov, believes that if the state has no money for subsidies, it would be better to abolish them altogether.
"We are like dependents of the government. We can't do anything about it and we just swallow the insult when they say: 'We have no money, this will all roll over to 2025. This is normal practice.' But we believe it's not normal practice. From our poor, lame farmer, we take away even his crutch to give to those sitting on his neck," Aldazharov stated.
Earlier, it was reported that for 2022-2023, 57,449 agricultural producers in Kazakhstan received subsidies totalling 943 billion tenge, but a significant portion of these funds went to large agricultural holdings whose owners are included in the Forbes.kz ranking.