According to a letter of the patronage association in the wine industry, Union of Enologists, Association of Table Grape Producers and Exporters, Moldova Wine Guild and Moldovan Small Wine Producers Association sent to Vasile Bumacov – Minister of Agriculture and Food Industry of Moldova, grape growers and wine producers ask him for a meeting on the matter.

 

“We want to also invite representatives of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry, director of a realization group, as well as representatives of banks, which will be selected for the participation in the program. The meeting is necessary for considering principles of on-lending, as well as banks’ interest rates and margins”, the letter stated.

 

As Infotag has already reported, 75 million euros provided by the EIB for the wine sector will be guided by the credit line directorate, which is under jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance. Minister of Finance Veaceslav Negruta said he hopes the line will become operational before autumn.

 

Infotag’s dossier: EIB assigns money to the state for a 12-year term with a 4-year grace period under the interest rate 0.68% + LIBOR. The wine production sector will get 50% of the credit, the grapes growing one – 30%, and related enterprises – 10%, the rest of the means will be allotted to equip laboratories and train specialists. In the beginning, it was expected the EIB credit will cost not more than 4%, but later one it was said that it must not exceed 5%. However, lately, authorities gave prospective borrowers of EIB loans to understand that bank interest rate will be about 9%, which is inconvenient for wine producers.