The program of reducing the price for agricultural machinery should be improved

The mechanism of reducing the price for Ukrainian agricultural machinery should be improved in order to increase its efficiency.

This opinion is expressed by Yaroslav Navrotsky, a researcher at the Department of Investment, Material and Technical Support of the National Research Center Institute of Agrarian Economics, the press service of the Institute writes.

It is specified that for 9 months of 2017, only 2.3% (UAH 11.58 million) were used out of the UAH 550 million provided by the state budget under the program. According to the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine, 96 agricultural enterprises are supposed to receive compensation for such amount for 149 units of Ukrainian agricultural machinery they had purchased.

"First of all, the date for the formation of the list of domestic machinery and equipment for the agro-industrial complex should be established no later than February 1. Under these conditions, agrarians will have time to purchase the Ukrainian-made machinery they need at the beginning of spring field work, and they will also be able to plan purchases for the autumn-field period," he said.

According to Yaroslav Navrotsky, it is advisable to increase the compensation under the program to the maximum level of 40% stipulated in Paragraph 5, Art. 8 of the Law of Ukraine On the stimulation of the development of domestic engineering for the agro-industrial complex of 07.02.2002 №3023-III, which will increase the interest of both producers of agricultural machinery and agro-enterprises.

"Compensation should be given not to agricultural enterprises, but directly to producers and sellers of machinery, and sales should be carried out at a price reduced by the amount of compensation. This will give buyers the opportunity to purchase domestic equipment immediately at a reduced price without performing bureaucratic procedures, and sellers will be able to activate sales of their products by increasing demand and guaranteed by the state compensation," scientists of the Institute of Agrarian Economics note.

Yaroslav Navrotsky noted that it is necessary to oblige agricultural machinery manufacturers to send 50% of the compensations they receive to carry out scientific and design work, introduce the latest production technologies, improve the quality, reliability and productivity of machinery.

"The implementation of these measures will allow agrarians to speed up the renewal of the machine and tractor parks of their enterprises, increase labor productivity and, as a result, improve financial results and increase tax revenues to the budget, while at the enterprises of agricultural machinery this will stimulate the creation of new jobs and increase the competitiveness of domestic agrotechnics," he summs up.

Let us remind, that in the opinion of Yaroslav Navrotsky, the low effectiveness of the compensation program of the agricultural machinery cost is due, first of all, to the bureaucratic aspects of the process, the insufficient quality and efficiency of Ukrainian machinery, as well as due to the deadlines for accepting applications from producers of agricultural machinery.