The Ministry of Agriculture’s Deputy State Secretary for Agricultural Economy attended a professional conference in Visegrád, where he reported on current government measures concerning animal breeding.
In his speech, Zsolt Feldman highlighted the fact that among the member states of the European Union Hungary achieved by far the greatest increase in cattle stocks, including dairy cattle, during the 2010-2016 period. “Despite the two-year international milk market crisis, dairy cattle stocks increased by almost 8 percent between 2010 and 2016”, he added, also noting that beef cattle stocks had almost doubled during the six-year period.
With relation to the output of the poultry sector, Mr. Feldman said that output had increased by 25 percent between 2010 and 2016 at unchanged prices, which represents the 7th largest increase in the EU.
The Deputy State Secretary recalled that several measures had been introduced recently involving the reduction of VAT, pointing out that the agriculture sector VAT decreases began with the reduction of the VAT on live pigs and pig half carcasses, and continued in 2017 with a cut in the VAT on poultry meat, eggs and fresh milk, the effects of which are being continuously monitored, and are expected to have results based on the experience so far.
Mr. Feldman highlighted that some 40 billion forints are spent every year via production-based funding programmes to support animal breeders based on their numbers of livestock, and a further 8 billion to facilitate the cultivation of protein crops, all of which serves to promote animal husbandry in Hungary. Within the framework of this funding, farmers received over 49 thousand forints in funding for each suckling cow and 7800 forints for each milking ewe they own, while farmers received over 104 thousand forints in funding for each dairy cow based on their funding application for 2016.