June 6 2002, 16:50 UkrInform

Agricultural risks. Crop insurance should be given a priority

UkrInform reported that Ukrainian Vice-Premier Leonid Kozachenko talking to June 5th press conference in Kyiv expressed his concern about necessity to introduce agricultural risk insurance for farming businesses.

He emphasized that in certain Oblasts like Cherkasy, Kyiv, Kirovohrad, some farmers did insure their crops thus allowing to recover losses caused by bad weather almost for 15% of the farmers through insurance management risk tool.

Regretfully, in Crimea where drought caused the hardest damage to agriculture none of the farms insured their crops. К сожалению, в

Next year, said Kozachenko the government plans to introduce the program stipulating recovering insurance payments to farmers.

"If this expense would be stipulated by the budget 2002 this year one would see increased insuring of agricultural risks and farmer's damage were far less."

Presently, Kozachenko stated, the government has no way to finance all damages caused by drought even if reserve funds are used for this purpose.