The Government activated yesterday the first aid to the agricultural sector that already suffers the effects of the drought in its farms. An initial lifeline focused on two fronts. On the one hand, it authorized reductions in personal income tax for farmers and ranchers who pay taxes under the module system and, on the other, it advanced a package of financial aid for different sectors.
In the tax section, the Ministry of Finance published yesterday in the Official State Gazette (BOE) an order to apply a general reduction in net income of 25% to which, according to calculations by the Tax Agency, up to 800,000 professionals may have access. autonomous. The reduction in income tax is extended to 30% for professionals dedicated to the cereal, oilseeds and legumes, chestnut, peach, nectarine, apricot and livestock sectors, and reaches 50% in the case of the olive grove, the almond tree and beekeeping. The Executive has therefore decided to apply a greater tax reduction to the farms most affected at this time by the lack of rain. Professionals dedicated to fruit trees in the interior of Catalonia, where there are 70,000 planted hectares, will be eligible for this aid.
The Treasury estimates that the order will mean a reduction in the tax base of 1,807 million euros, the most far-reaching in the last decade, according to what the Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, highlighted yesterday after the government meeting.
The same order of the Ministry of Finance contains additional aid for professionals in the field who declare their personal income tax through objective agrarian estimation. To this end, it approved a 35% reduction in the previous net yield for the purchase of agricultural diesel and 15% in the case of the purchase of fertilizers.
Farmers who purchase feed from third parties, both intensive and extensive, and farmers with crops on irrigated land that use electricity will continue to benefit from a reduction in the correction index of 0.5 and 0.75 respectively.
The Council of Ministers, for its part, gave the green light to a package of agreements to activate urgent and direct financial support for the agricultural sector. This is the first aid measure activated in this rainfall crisis since, as stated by the third vice president and minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, the Government is contemplating new exceptional aid.
This set of measures includes the renewal of the agreement between the State Agricultural Insurance Entity (Enesa) and Agroseguro to subsidize the contracting of policies for the year 2023 for a total of 317.7 million. This is one of the main claims of farmers and ranchers: that the insurance be agile so that, in the event that they had to be activated, they do not stop their activity for too long. At this moment there are 410,000 policies and last year, according to Planas, some 14,800 million of national agricultural production were insured.
The Council of Ministers also approved the mobilization of 292.7 million for special funds for the countryside. Specifically, the central administration will contribute 158.2 million more to various sectors and subjects charged to this year's Budgets. The aid is directed to the beekeeping sector, to the control of milk yield, to the program of specific options for remoteness and insularity (focused on the Canary Islands) and to native national livestock breeds.
"Our farmers and ranchers can rest easy because we are going to continue supporting them," declared Luis Planas. For the Junta de Andalucía these aids are not enough. The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development, Carmen Crespo, demanded yesterday to advance the funds of the CAP to 90%, other tax reductions that affect VAT, a reduction in social security contributions and deductions in the IBI.
