Romania's Agricultural Payments Agency (APIA) postponed payments to farmers due to the deficient management at county level and problems with IT software, Romanian Agriculture minister Dacian Ciolos said in a HotNews.ro - BBC weekly debate. Ciolos talked about APIA's to-do list for the following weeks when it needs to pay up three quarters of the European agricultural subsidies for 2007. Otherwise the state will lose 300 million euro. Ciolos declared that subsidy requests would decrease this year as compared to the previous one.

Ciolos declared that APIA was doing everything in its power to work as efficiently as possible even if it faced serious problems at the management level in Romania's counties and with the IT software used.

He urged authorities to offer local judicial autonomy to county level representatives and assured that this could resolve the bad management issues the agency is currently facing. He adds that the agency currently worked at its maximum efficiency and did not need more people.

When it comes to EU subsidies, Ciolos says that the Union allocated over 400 million euro for farmers but the agency only managed to pay some 100 million euro so far. Even if the deadline expires in one month and a half, Ciolos says the agency will be able to pay up all farmers in time, otherwise the money will be lost.

Moreover, Ciolos declared that subsidy requests for 2008 would drop in number because many small farmers associated to receive higher subventions while others were bought by larger farms. Still others renounced to fill up the extensive paperworks in order to receive the small sum allocated, arguing that it is not worthwhile. Romania's Agricultural Payments Agency (APIA) postponed payments to farmers due to the deficient management at county level and problems with IT software, Romanian Agriculture minister