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Russian Far-Eastern region needing 4 bln rubles for jump-starting agriculture

The region needs 1.7 billion rubles to restore the main farmlands and to make up for the immediate damage done to the 297,400 hectares of farmland

BLAGOVESCHENSK, September 24 (Itar-Tass) - Russia’s Far-Eastern Amur region stands in need of $4 billion rubles /USD1=RUB32.7/ to rehabilitate its farming sector after the inordinate floods that struck its territory in the first half of this month, regional governor Oleg Kozhemyako said Tuesday at conference chaired by the Russian President’s plenipotentiary representative in the Far-Eastern federal district, Yuri Trutnev.

The latter man said at the opening of the conference that all the problems causing concern to the population should be resolved.

“They’re asking us many questions on agriculture and they should be lifted and answers to them should be found after the conference,” Trutnev said.

“The flood took away one-third of this year’s harvest, and livestock farms have only 48% of the provender they need,” Gov Kozhemyako said. “To restore the agricultural sector, which is the main sphere of economic activity of our population and bring a third of all earnings to it, we need 4 billion rubles.”

He asked the federal authorities to allocate monies to the region so that it could cover in full the interest rates on all the types of loans taken by the agricultural producers who had been affected by the flood.

The region needs 1.7 billion rubles to restore the main farmlands and to make up for the immediate damage done to the 297,400 hectares of farmland, which stands at 1.2 billion rubles.

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