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Friday, April 19, 2024 15:23 GMT
Since he took office as president of the Republic one year ago, President of the Republic Abdelmadjid Tebboune has made agriculture the backbone of his economic recovery plan with a view to ensuring food security, boosting the economy and reducing dependence on hydrocarbons.President Tebboune considers agriculture “the lever of national economy.” Therefore, he has made this sector the backbone of his economic programme in order to “steer Algeria out of dependence on hydrocarbons.”Once elected, President Tebboune has clearly expressed his will to give up on hydrocarbons as the main resource of the State budget, particularly after the sharp fall in oil prices. In this regard, he instructed the Government to implement a sustainable agricultural policy to ensure food security, stabilize the trade balance of staple food items and diversify the economy.During the Council of Ministers’ meetings he chaired, Tebboune has always focused on the need to cease the practices of the past by adopting new management methods in accordance with the needs and specificities of the country, and to create factories operating in agrifood.The head of State also instructed public authorities to encourage the production of meat domestically in order to reduce the import bill, address the issues related to the lack of milk and develop a national food product storage policy. He urged them to settle the issue of irrigation, notably in the High Plateaus and southern provinces.As for desert and mountainous farming, Tebboune ordered the encouragement of wealth-generating sectors like fruit growing and beekeeping so that citizens can buy these products at low prices.The president also ordered the creation of a Desert Farming Agriculture.The roadmap for agriculture aims at establishing a new agricultural and rural system based on private investments and led by a new generation of producers.The new agricultural policy began soon to bring its fruits. Despite the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, which lasted almost all of 2020, the contribution of agricultural production to the GDP exceeds US$25 billion against US23 billion during the previous agricultural campaign.Speaking at a Council of Ministers’ meeting, President Tebboune welcomed the "huge" work accomplished by farmers in a particularly "adverse" situation, by ensuring the supply of the market with agricultural products in "abundance" and at "acceptable" prices."The implementation of the roadmap for agriculture requires an appropriate reorganization of the structures of the Ministry of Agriculture at the national, regional and local levels," he continued.The aforesaid roadmap also provides for the modernization which relies on the development of the animal and vegetal sectors, support to farmers through a new funding system based on rural mutual credit, the reactivation of social security for farmers, plant protection, new technologies and scientific research.