Turkey’s food committee makes decisions on incentive packages to ease prices

ANKARA

The Food and Agricultural Committee has made decisions on the incentive packages that will reduce the costs of licensed warehouse utilization by producers. It will also reduce the costs of commercial transactions that the producer groups conduct with their own partners and members, the Central Bank said in a statement on July 16.

The Food and Agricultural Product Markets Monitoring and Evaluation Committee met under the presidency of Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Şimşek, read the statement.

The main topics of the meeting were agricultural production, financing of agriculture and medium/long term structural issues regarding food supply chain. A summary of the agenda and decisions made are given in the statement.

The committee made decisions on the incentive packages that will help reduce the costs of licensed warehouse utilization by producers as well as the costs of commercial transactions that the producer organizations conduct with their own partners and members, while it did not give any further details regarding what these incentives would be. 

Studies towards enhancing efficiency in key logistics processes along the fresh fruit-vegetable supply chain such as harvest, classification, packaging, storage, transportation and cold chain were evaluated, various incentive models were discussed and it was decided to move on to the implementation stage in priority areas, it also said. 

Suggestions for measures to diversify financial products concerning the agricultural sector and to improve financing conditions, including collaterals in the first place, were evaluated, it added.

The Turkish Competition Authority presented information on the progress it has made in the competition inspections regarding the food sector and the additional steps planned to be taken, according to the statement.