By New Europe - Nov 4 2006 - Issue : 702

During a visit to Brussels last week, Jemin Gjana, Minister of Agriculture, Food and Consumer Protection of Albania spoke to Tejinder Singh (Tito) about the reforms his ministry has undertaken and his vision of sustainable development of agriculture sector for uplifting Albanian economy.

Albania is geographically on the European continent and with regard to EU aspirations, how does your visit fit in?

Along with my delegation, I am here to discuss the situation in Albania with respect of our standards in food safety and about the possibility of Albanian agriculture being exported to the EU. In the field of the fish processing industry, we already have 12 companies exporting to EU, three others are waiting for European Commission clearance in December to join, while others are in the process getting ready in the coming months.

We are looking forward to having the support of the EU about training and logistics support, and to certify our laboratories and our institutes in the field of veterinary and other allied fields.

We have a report on import and export in Albania and it's a bad balance for us in favour to import, so we are making the effort to improve the export sector.

You have a National Food Security Authority in the making? Please comment.

We have finished drafting the new law for food safety and I hope this law, based on European standards, gets approval in the Albanian parliament in the next two months. With this, we are creating in Albania a "National Food Security Authority." We have financial support of about five million Euro, of which two million are implemented by FAO and three million taken by the EU.

We hope that after implementation of this programme/project we will be able to create the national authority at the start of 2007.

You have a National Residue Control Plan which is compatible with the EU Council directive 96/23/EC. In what phase is it now?

In March of this year, we had the European mission for the residues, and we have fulfilled all the duties asked by the mission, and we sent the report in August to the European Commission about the residues, fulfilling all our duties asked by the European Commission.

Since your handling of this ministry, you have given a lot of importance to the "small livestock industry." You announced to subsidise "all farmers" that "breed pure Albanian cattle or grazers." How do you see this developing?

There are some small projects in the livestock, especially in the field to improve the situation in Albania. We have finished during the first half of this year a study about slaughter houses in Albania, and we started to implement this study immediately.

Also, we have projects from an association in France, from Switzerland, from Turkey, from Austria, from the Netherlands and from Nordic countries

We already have good results in areas like Gjirokastra, Korcha and Vlora etc. with respect to the situation in the livestock, especially in cattle, but it's necessary to have to enforce these in other areas.

Albania has the Presidency of CEI this year. How is it progressing?

We organised a CEI conference in Durus this year. We have had representatives from all the countries from CEI. We had important presences, four countries were represented by the ministers leading delegations other secretaries of state or deputy ministers like Italy, Hungary and Czech Republic etc.

We discussed very important issues like markets, the needs for our regions to integrate our markets, agriculture markets to the European Union. We stressed our necessity to fulfil standards in the markets, to cooperate and coordinate our efforts in the region.

Over a period of time, you have a vision of sustainable development of agriculture for uplifting rural economy, a standard of living and reduction of poverty. Please elaborate.

Over the last years we have visualised three big targets in the Albanian agriculture sector.

We faced some difficulties in our agriculture because we divided our agriculture land in the beginning of 1999 for all families of rural area. This has created a situation where there are small sizes in our farms in Albania. We have about 400,000 farms in Albania, most of them are not the parts of markets in Albania. The average size can be 1.5 hectare for one farm, very small size. We are interested to support these small farms by making cooperatives and associations because it's impossible to be effective with this size of farms.

With our first target we are planning specialisation of Albanian agriculture in four sectors: vegetables (especially to grow in Green Houses); fruit trees; vineyards and livestock.

With our second target, we aim to invest together in the private sector with private investors and state budgets. We plan to create a chain of markets in Albania with a chain of wholesalers and retailers, because more than 80 percent of our farms do not have the possibility to be present in the markets, to be part of the markets and to sell.

Under our third target, we want to improve our standards and to respect the standards in the food safety.

Overall, we hope to create for the next year the possibility, to support with the state budget, small projects worth about USD five million to support the farms, to enhance the surface with fruit trees, with vineyards and maybe after that we will explore the possibility to support the milk processing factories and the meat-processing sector. And then in the coming years, we will expand to vegetable processing and food processing sectors. It is impossible for next year as we have not much financial possibility to support our farms to go in these directions yet.

On May 9, 2006, USAID and UNDP signed an agreement worth USD 320,000 to help Albania meet the threat of Avian Influenza. What progress has been made?

We have started a new project with the World Bank of about USD six million to have under control the situation in all the areas about Avian influenza. We had in the beginning of this year two cases in Albania, one in the northern part, and one in a village near Tirana. With this programme, with the aid of the World Bank, we have created a small team in the ministry under the control of the National Authority of Veterinary Services. Moreover, in all areas, we have veterinary people who are responsible for those regions. We have taken logistics by USAID and UNDP. We have contacts with others in the region, veterinary services in Montenegro, Kosovo, FYROM, and we have been together this year to survey the situation in all the region.

What is your ministry doing for Consumer protection?

Since the creation of this new ministry after the last election, we have created new structures in the ministry, and also in the local structures to have the situation under control in the field of food safety for our consumers as our first duties and our steps to the European Union.

We have under control all our processing factories. We have nowadays about 2,000 establishments in the processing sector, meat processing and other fields, and some of them are already certified, and we are working on the certification of most of them within coming years.

Are you satisfied with EU dealings?

This is the first reason for me and my colleagues to be here to explain our improvements and these changes made in Albania. It's necessary for us to be responsible for situations and to have them under control, to improve the food safety and standards step by step. I hope Albania will be present in the European markets step-by-step. This month we hope to start exporting eggs from Albania, and we are already present with fish processing.