Coping with the aftermath of the drought without support from the federal and local budgets will be difficult.

(Kazan, July 26, Tatar-inform, Natalia Rybakova). Tatarstan is going through a crisis due to a drought. Coping with its aftermath would require great financial expenses, Tatarstan President Rustam Minnikhanov told a meeting at the Cabinet of Ministers.

The video conference participants summed up Tatarstan’s financial, fiscal and tax bodies’s performance in the first half of 2010. Attendees were Prime Minister Ildar Khalikov, Tatarstan Prosecutor Kafil Amirov and others.

“The situation in the financial field has so far been complicated, the sum of the damages is huge. A total of 25 billion roubles has been spent on the spring field work and plant production. We used to have a yield of 35 billion roubles every year but this year we will at best produce 10 billion roubles. We will not only lose money but we will lose rough and succulent feed,” Minnikhanov said while opening the meeting.

Overcoming the drought’s effects without serious aid from the federal and territorial budgets will be difficult. According to the Tatarstan president, the decision was made to take certain measures of financial support: 600 roubles will be allocated per livestock unit of community cattle, 2 thousand roubles will be given to keep cows at private farmsteads.

“The chief task is to save the cattle. We will do everything that is necessary. We have made overcoming drought in the part of the industrial complex the priority. Russia’s financial stability allows to resolve these crisis issues. We have sufficient grain reserves but we will lay in at most 50 percent of the needed rough and succulent feed,” Minnikhanov noted. This means 1.5-2 million tonnes of rough and succulent feed will have to be imported. Forage grain will have to be bought as well.
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