The Government agrees to an extraordinary increase in State support for contracting agricultural insurance

The budget rises to 275.7 million

MADRID, 19 Jul. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Council of Ministers has approved this Tuesday the modification of the 43rd Combined Agricultural Insurance Plan to incorporate the budget allocation in the 2022 financial year, estimated at 18 million euros, necessary to be able to apply the 10 percentage point increase in the base subsidy in the lines of insurance that start contracting from next September 1.

"We believe that it is a very effective measure, that it will be an element that will give greater peace of mind to farmers and ranchers", assured the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Luis Planas, during the press conference after the Council of Minister.

The expansion of this endowment is one of the measures approved by the Council of Ministers on June 25 within Royal Decree-Law 11/2022, which extends and approves new measures to support the agricultural sector in the current context of increase of costs in agricultural exploitations derived from the war in Ukraine for which a budget of 60 million euros was allocated.

With this increase, the budget for this year rises to 275.7 million euros, an amount that reaches 317.7 million if the period of one year of application of the measure is considered.

Agriculture has specified that it is a "figure never before reached in the history of insurance", and that it is more than 50% higher than the budget approved for each of the years of the period between 2013-2020.

This support action is the second modification of great importance that is carried out this year in the agricultural insurance policy, after the new mechanism that provided greater protection to the system by public reinsurance, through the Insurance Compensation Consortium , and which was published in the BOE on June 30 through Order ETD/600/2022, of June 29.

Planas recalled that in 2021 a total of 722 million euros of compensation was paid, while in the first half of the year it was already 514 million euros. "It is a system that works well, but we must support them for the future," he stressed.

The head of the branch has reiterated that agricultural insurance is a "fundamental risk management element" for exports and has recalled that currently 400,000 policies insure an area of ​​six million hectares, as well as a large number of cattle.

On the other hand, and regarding the fires that are ravaging Spain these weeks, Planas has confirmed that the agricultural insurance covers both crops, pastures and livestock in the event that it is destroyed and provided that it has been contracted, while it has not been able to give data on the number of hectares affected. "It's too early to have that information and we don't have the broken down data yet," he acknowledged.