The livestock sector is suffering from constraints for the third year

The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries, Rural Development, Water and Forests, Muhammad Seddiqi, said that the livestock sector is suffering for the third year in a row from several problems that the government is constantly trying to confront by subsidizing fodder, maintaining the health of the herd, and opening and supporting imports.

This came in response to parliamentary representatives raising what they described as the crisis of high prices of sacrifices during the last Eid al-Adha, during the oral question session in the House of Representatives, on Monday, where my friend confirmed that during the preparation for this Eid, 6.3 million heads of livestock were numbered, and 474,312 subsidized heads were imported. In addition to 41 thousand heads without support since the beginning of the year, he explained that the government will continue to exempt import duties and value-added tax to supply the market with red meat during the coming months.

In the same context, the minister stressed “the necessity of taking into account this not easy circumstance,” saying: “And where do we waste the future, we say, ‘May God have mercy on us in the winter. Otherwise, we will not have solutions.’”

He added: “For the second year, we are working on the import process assigned by the National Grain and Cotton Office, setting the number at 600,000 heads as a maximum, and appointing a committee to supervise the management of the process,” highlighting that the number of importers whose list was published on the office’s website has reached a maximum of 600,000 heads. June 15, 160 importers from all regions of the Kingdom.

In this context, he said that the import “was an exceptional measure, something we had never seen before and had never wanted or wanted. What we want is to preserve the national herd.”
Protection of seafarers

In response to a question about protecting sailors from work accidents, the same minister stated that the National Maritime Rescue Committee, which consists of the marine fishing sector, the Royal Navy, the Royal Gendarmerie, the Royal Air Forces and Civil Protection, is constantly working to improve and strengthen the national maritime safety system by imposing strict safety conditions. On board coastal fishing vessels and the high seas.

In this context, he recalled the work on distributing rescue vests to traditional fishing boats with positioning devices, and strengthening the rescue fleet with two latest-class ships, to raise the fleet of this type to 21 ships, in addition to providing the Marine Rescue Coordination Center with advanced electronic equipment.

Regarding accelerating compensation for work accidents, Muhammad Siddiqi stated that the Ministry “is working to annotate marine reports of ship accidents in less than 48 hours, and these compensations remain subject to the procedures taken by insurance institutions.”

Economy in irrigation water

On the other hand, the same government official stated that the country relied on investing in irrigation, expanding irrigated areas, and saving irrigation water.

He pointed out that the irrigated areas in normal climatic years amount to 1.8 million hectares, but in the face of successive years of drought that led to the limitation and scarcity of water resources, the Ministry hastened to develop proactive and continuous measures to control and rationalize irrigation water by adopting programs that enabled the equipping of about 850,000 Hectares with drip irrigation and modernization of large irrigation networks covering an area of ​​175 thousand hectares.

He added that the Ministry, within the framework of the Green Generation Strategy, continues its efforts to rationalize the use and value of water resources, double water efficiency, and support the sustainability of irrigated agriculture by equipping additional areas with water-saving irrigation systems to reach one million hectares by 2030, and continuing to expand irrigation with the bottom of completed and programmed dams over an area of ​​70 thousand. hectares, and continuing the program of re-establishing small and medium irrigation circles on an area of ​​200 thousand hectares, and increasing the water supply through structured projects centered on desalinating seawater for irrigation purposes with the aim of reaching 120 thousand hectares of irrigation with desalinated water to protect and sustain irrigation in some agricultural basins and creating other basins.

The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries, Rural Development, Water and Forests recalled that the budget for total investments in irrigation projects amounted to 27.7 billion dirhams since the launch of the Green Generation Strategy in 2021.