ONLY 26 PERCENT OF LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENTS HAVE STRATEGIC RURAL DEVELOPMENT PLANS

9. March 2021.

Presevo, Bujanovac, Меdvedja - Only 26 percent of cities and municipalities in Serbia have strategic rural development plans, and that is why, despite the large number of documents regulating that field, the situation in that sphere is still unsatisfactory, it was said in the report of the State Audit Institution (SAI).

The SAI sent questionnaires to the addresses of 145 local self-governments and found out that less than a third of them had strategic rural development plans in their territories. It is interesting that the cities and municipalities that set aside the most funds for incentive measures did not have any strategic plans.

In the Jablanica and Pcinja districts, only Leskovac and Vranje have a rural development strategy. In 2017, Leskovac invested 17,753 dinars in that area, 23,280 dinars the following year, and 29,012 dinars in 2019, which is a total of slightly more than 70 thousand dinars. In the same period, Vranje allocated half as much funds for that area.

None of the municipalities in the aforementioned two districts has a rural development strategy, but most of them have planned funds in their budgets for those purposes. Thus, in the above-mentioned three years, Lebane set aside 1,000 dinars, Medvedja 29,125 dinars, and Bojnik close to 20 thousand dinars, while Bujanovac and Surdulica allocated twice more funds. The report shows that Presevo has not dealt with rural development so far.

Rural areas face many problems. According to the data of the Republican Statistics Office for 2018, the average age of farm owners is 61, while it was 59 only six years ago. Under the national strategy, it was planned to increase the share of farm owners under the age of 35 by 20 percent, but it dropped from 4.6 to 3.1 percent in the review period.

Agricultural machinery is considered obsolete, as over 80 percent of tractors and combines are more than 20 years old. Those are two key areas that need to be addressed.

Source: Jugpress and Coordination Body