The Court of Accounts identified a number of inconsistencies in the process of providing compensation and humanitarian aid to farmers affected by natural disasters in 2020.
As noted by the Court of Accounts, 2020 was a difficult year for agriculture due to a prolonged drought that affected both fall and spring crops. In order to mitigate the effects of the natural disaster, compensation and humanitarian aid were provided to the affected farmers from three sources of financing amounting to 462.8 million lei: 324 million lei was allocated from the National Fund for Agricultural and Rural Development; 275 million Russian rubles (the equivalent of 59.7 million lei) were allocated from grant aid provided by Russia; humanitarian aid from Romania was 6 thousand tons of diesel oil worth 79.1 million lei. According to the audit of the Court of Accounts, some applications for compensation and humanitarian aid contained unreliable data. At the same time, the Agency for Intervention and Payments in Agriculture (AIPA), which approves or rejects applications, has no tools to verify the correctness of some of the data in the documents submitted by applicants. Also, the audit found uneven application of AIPA's legal provisions regarding application acceptance deadlines, which determined the advantage for some beneficiaries by extending the application deadline by 1 day for them and the disadvantage for others, for whom the deadline was reduced by 1 day. In addition, the Court of Accounts drew attention to the fact that the changes introduced in some government decisions - the exclusion of the mandatory justification of the ownership or use of agricultural land - led to the risk of double provision of funds (both owners and managers) for the same affected areas. Also according to the audit, the 2020 Drought Damage Assessment Act was prepared in the absence of an appropriate regulation approved by the authorities and establishing an assessment mechanism. The lack of a thought-out and approved regulatory mechanism led to a number of inconsistencies in the execution of documents on the assessment of damage caused by natural disasters. The Court of Accounts considers it necessary to take urgent measures to review, adjust and approve the methodology of damage assessment in order to eliminate the future use of ambiguous approaches in the preparation of the act of damage assessment. The Court of Accounts also proposes to review and update the regulatory and legal framework related to natural disasters. //23.12.2022 - InfoMarket.
