EU funds begin to encourage farmers to invest for the future

According to Rzeczpospolita, the help from the EU pre-accession funds has caused an investment boom in the countryside. Farmers are modernizing their farms, which is translating into increased sales of agricultural goods and services. Ursus, the national tractor producer, which faced bankruptcy last year, now has stopped accepting orders, as it does not have the capacity to realize all of them. Also the Puławy Nitrogen Plant has seen the sales of fertilizers increase by 100,000 tones in the first four months of 2004. "This is just the beginning," commented Jacek Świeżawski, the deputy president of the Agency for Restructuring and Modernization of Agriculture and added that farmers so far only had access to the pre-accession SAPARD fund, but in July the Agency will start to collect applications for support from the EU structural funds. Between 2004-2006 Poland will receive EUR 5.25 billion from the EU to modernize its agriculture. (Rzeczpospolita, pp. A1, B1) E.B.