The government is preparing to pay a record amount in agriculture this year

The Secretary of State responsible for agriculture and rural development of the Ministry of Agriculture reminded: in the last two years, agricultural investments received HUF 1,300 billion in subsidies, this year the government plans to pay another HUF 350 billion in subsidies. Within the framework of the Rural Development Program, Hungary supplemented the resources of the 2021-2027 EU budget cycle with an unprecedented amount of 80% national resources from 2021 and began to use them in agriculture. Thanks to this, in 2021-2022, the transition years of the Common Agricultural Policy, the Ministry of Agriculture announced new calls for tenders with a resource limit of HUF 1,500 billion, which can be considered the largest agricultural and food industry development program of the past decades.

A record amount of support goes to the right place

Zsolt Feldman said that in connection with calls for agricultural and food industry investments, nearly 11,000 applications received approximately HUF 1,300 billion in support since 2021. Even in 2023, new support decisions will be made in the order of hundreds of billions for development projects, in which the beneficiaries have maintained their intention to implement them. Since the implementation of the previously started developments is still taking place to a significant extent, even with the current difficulties, we forecast at least HUF 350 billion in investment-related payments in the year 2023 out of the total HUF 750 billion in rural development subsidies that are expected to be paid. Investment funds of this magnitude have never been allocated for this purpose within one year, the state secretary indicated.

The ministry is not planning any new investment calls in the near future

According to Zsolt Feldman, the Ministry of Agriculture does not plan to publish new investment calls in the coming months, in accordance with the needs of the sector’s players and in view of the current record number of subsidized developments. In connection with the new calls for tenders for rural development, the schedule will be prepared in the second half of 2023, and the first tender opportunities are expected at the end of this year and at the beginning of 2024. All of this is in line with the reopening opportunities of the financing environment, which is expected to become more favorable in the second half of the year, which will strengthen the intention to implement new agricultural and food industry investments and enable the optimal use of the 1,500 billion HUF development resources intended for them.

AM