They turned into a burden on the treasury with many fires and disasters
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A new law in the government’s work plan obliges them to provide social coverage
The Secretary-General of the Algerian Economic Forum, Zan Yahya, counts 1.9 million farmers outside the insurance system in Algeria out of a total of two million farmers registered with the National Chamber of Agriculture, meaning that the agricultural insurance rate, according to him, is only 5%, while the state takes care of natural disasters. Similar to floods, and even in the event of risks such as fires, the affected farmers and loyalists should be compensated from the public treasury, and the process includes believers and non-believers, which has turned into a heavy burden on the shoulders of the state.
In a statement to Al-Shorouk, the agricultural expert, Zan Yahya, confirms that the reason for the reluctance of a large number of farmers from insurance is the approved “unconditional compensation policy”, which dedicates compensation to all affected farmers, similar to what happened in the recent fires, where the process includes insured and non-believers. The believers, which led to the generation of a dependent mentality among the farmers who do not find themselves obliged to insure in light of the fact that they benefit each time from the compensation, as well as the lack of confidence in the insurance institutions, as the latter takes long periods of time to compensate the insured, and sometimes the amount of compensation does not amount to The level of their ambition, which caused the reluctance of the peasants.
The spokesman confirmed that the insurance law file has been ready since 2012, and this project includes agricultural disaster insurance, but it is frozen for administrative and bureaucratic reasons, as it was deposited again on the table of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development a few days ago, and included in the government’s work plan, which he described as a “step.” Positive”, where insurance will be mandatory, while the expert will be obliged to submit his report within 15 days of the accident, and the insurance company will be obliged to compensate the customer within a maximum period of one month.
And according to what was included in the draft law proposal, of which Al-Shorouk obtained a copy, insurance against disasters is not compulsory, but it gives a set of guarantees to farmers, pushing them to participate, as it was prepared in partnership between various insurance companies within the framework of the National Insurance Council, and among these guarantees Granting the farmer the trust factor for insurance and stopping compensation for uninsured persons.
The spokesman praised the Ministry of Agriculture’s response to this initiative by including it in the government’s action plan, to quickly absorb the major losses incurred by the state every time in the event of fires, floods or any natural disasters, and demanded a reactivation in the same context of the National Fund for Agricultural Disasters, which has been frozen since 2005. .
In a related context, and according to the government’s plan of action on the parliament table, and with regard to the development of the agricultural sector, the government seeks to enhance financial supervision, agricultural insurance and social protection for farmers through the introduction of the rural cooperative loan and the establishment of insurance arrangements for natural and agricultural disasters and social coverage for farmers in order to secure the actors in This sector and revenue protection.
The latter also seeks to achieve food security by promoting modern, high-performance and wealth-creating agriculture, giving priority to promoting agricultural investment and food industries based on greater mobilization of financial resources, better production, and reducing the import of strategic agricultural products such as sugar beets, corn, rapeseed and grains, and seeking to reduce the import of these Materials or comprehensive coverage of them through local production, promotion of investment through facilitating access to real estate and eliminating bureaucracy by expanding the uses of the one-stop shop.
