SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, March 25. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries of the Government of the Canary Islands has proceeded this Friday to pay a second advance valued at 1.1 million euros to banana producers who have suffered income losses as a result of the volcanic eruption on the island from La Palma.
This is the second advance payment for the 116 applicants who were excluded from the initial payment or whose affected areas increased until the end of the eruption.
This aid complements the first payment made in December of last year for almost 3,000 affected producers and whose amount amounted to 13.5 million euros.
These funds, transferred by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to the Autonomous Community of the Canary Islands to compensate for losses in the sector, especially in the banana sector, are paid to the producer organizations that are in charge of distributing the aid to their members. .
The regional department included three types of conditions: on the one hand, the farms buried by lava, in which the intensity of the aid has been one hundred percent of the established calculation.
On the other hand, farms affected by ash and farms with no access to irrigation, in which the aid intensity has been 32% for the municipalities of Los Llanos de Aridane, Tazacorte and El Paso, and 11% for Tijarafe and Fuencaliente.
The Minister, Alicia Vanoostende, has highlighted the importance of “essential aid” to provide solvency to one of the main economic pillars of the Aridane Valley and La Palma, such as the banana sector, “which has courageously faced the consequences of the volcanic phenomenon”.
In this sense, he added that “the sector cannot wait for the end of the harvest to receive aid”, for which they have advanced two payments to “cushion” the effects of the crisis on producers.
Vanoostende recalled that the regional department is working to assess the impact of the volcano on the rest of the island’s crops.
“We already have the preliminary assessments and in the coming months we will enable a specific help line for each of the crops, and not just for bananas, although it has been the most affected and has the most professional workers,” he said.
In addition, he commented that the aid destined to replace greenhouses, animals and plants has already been taken out, to which must be added the irrigation works that began to connect the isolated areas and start this summer with the new plantations.
653730.1.260.149.20220325142808
