Azernews.Az

By Akbar Mammadov

Azerbaijan’s Agriculture Ministry plans to provide over $3 million (AZN 5 million) in subsidies to beekeepers, the ministry said on June 10.

According to the Subsidy Rules approved by the Presidential Decree of June 27, 2019, a subsidy of $5.8 (10 AZN) is paid per a bee family.

Given the fact that in total, 506,944 beehives have been registered, the total amount of the subsides to be allocated to the beekeepers is equal to more than 3 million dollars.

The ministry also noted that as of 2020, 22,670 beekeepers have been registered in the Electronic Agricultural Information System and these beekeepers have 22,781 bee farms and serve 23,052 apiaries.

The highest number of beekeepers, bee farms and beehives has been registered in Balakan region. Thus, 32,273 beehives are kept in 1,104 bee farms in this region. According to the number of beekeepers, Zagatala region is marked as the region with the most interest in this economic activity in the country with 1,349 beekeepers.

Aghsu, Tovuz, Lerik and Gakh districts are also ahead in terms of the number of farms.

It should be noted that in Azerbaijan, the main bee species that beekeepers prefer to keep is Bozdag Caucasian. There are 395,090 bee families of this genus recorded in the country.

In the meantime, Chairman of the Agrarian Credit and Development Agency Mirza Aliyev stressed that the subsidy paid to beekeepers will serve the development of this sector of the economy and increase productivity in the country.

“The new mechanism will allow us to identify areas that are interested in the development of this sector, but with low productivity. This will allow us to develop support projects to increase productivity in the future”, he said.

Moreover, it should be noted that under the new subsidy mechanism introduced this year, all subsidies to agricultural producers, including subsidies to beekeepers, are integrated into a single system in Electronic Agricultural Information System.

In order to receive subsidies, beekeepers place information about their farms, the number of beehives and the sex of the bees they feed in this system. The registration of beekeepers in Electronic Agricultural Information System for the 2020 subsidy year ended on May 31.

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Akbar Mammadov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AkbarMammadov97

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