Farmers ask to raise milk prices
The European Radio for Belarus asked the agriculture ministry and other experts whether it is true that Belarusians drink non-profitable milk.
The department of prices at the Ministry of Agriculture told our radio that it was still early to talk about whether milk production is profitable or not. But according to the 2007 estimates, milk production was loss-making in Belarus.
At the collective farm in the village of Vishnyouka, farmers complained about a difficult situation and asked to raise the purchasing price at two times! They say that groceries make money selling milk. But collective farms remain with nothing.
“The cost price is Br580. We sell milk for Br600. In shops, it costs Br1300. That’s why we are loss-making. If the prices grow, we will become profitable. We would be happy if they could raise the prices at two times”.
The situation with meat, especially beef, is even worse. In January, its profitability was minus 51 percent. Milk production was in the black thanks to the subsidies from the state budget.
Collective farms ask to raise prices at two times, but the Ministry of Agriculture does not have any exact dates or figures yet. Officials admit that there is a need for higher prices, because gas and energy costs continue to grow.
Economist Aliaksandr Chubryk says that milk production is not efficient in Belarus. “We cannot say with our skinny cows that milk production is profitable”, he said.
The expert describes the talks about a need to raise milk prices as excuses of the government.
“I think that agriculture buys very little gas, perhaps for fun. In the agricultural sectors, expenditures on gas are close to zero. They try to give them more money by raising the prices so that farmers could have finances for investments”.
In the view of the expert, if we keep raising foodstuffs prices along with the gas price growth, we will end up having prices higher than in Britain.
