Portugal's Agricultural Minister accused of lethargy

Paul 31 January 2014

cristas The socialist party has urged the Government to extend the deadline for small farmers to sign up for a new tax regime that may see many of traditional small farmers simply give up.

Socialist deputy Miguel Freitas today criticised the political machinations of Assunçao Cristas, Minister of Agriculture, in the fortnightly parliamentary debate.

"The Minister of Agriculture has deceived Portuguese farmers. After a year of repeated postponements of the new tax regime for small farmers she has repeatedly said she was working to simplify the system. Today the system is about to start and she has taken no action," said the Faro MP, on good form.

Miguel Freitas is right, last May Cristas said in parliament that she would present a set of measures intended to "simplify the scheme for small farmers trading below €10,000.”

"The Minister of Agriculture now says she will ask for special measures for small farmers, but what has the Lady Minister been doing for the past year? Why has she not asked that the tax system for small farmers to be postponed?" demanded Freitas who said it is essential "to extend the deadline for applications to the new tax regime" and urged the Government to make that decision today.

"If the Government does not extend the deadline, on Monday the Socialist Party will submit a draft request to parliament for it to extend the deadline," warned Freitas, keenly aware that the deadline was on February 1st and that many voters in Faro are involved in small scale agriculture.

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For the petition on Tomorrow Algarve, click here: http://www.tomorrowalgarve.com/community-news/community-news-section/tomorrow-news/525-traders-fear-for-future-of-lagos-marke

Comments

+2 #2 truthseeker 2014-02-02 23:44

Well, the government extended the (1st of February) deadline, "because still lots of farmers didn't register themselves yet" - so the government. Now farmers have time until the 30. 04. to do it. This isn't a solution, delaying it's not what we want from our corrupt politicians. I would like to remind to everybody that there is an online petition about this subject going on since at least october - would you believe it? It just reached 1492 signatures!!! (though it says "we need 5000" we actually need to reach 4000 signatures). This is a shame: don't people give a s**t about it or is it simply not enough informed? In the first case there's not much I can do but if lack of information is the reason for the ridicolous low amount of signatures, I will write here the link to the petition:

http://www.tomorrowalgarve.com/community-news/community-news-section/tomorrow-news/525-traders-fear-for-future-of-lagos-market

A sincere thank to you all for supporting it.

+4 #1 liveaboard 2014-02-02 11:00

The aim is surely to finish off the small farmers, who generally don't pay anything into the tax system.
If small farms become worth even less than they are now, eventually they'll be amalgamated into large, efficient agribusiness farms that do pay tax, and possibly even export something.
The ministers in Lisbon don't seem to realize that a potato, grown and eaten, is of benefit to the country, whether or not it's been documented and taxed. It's called production, or even wealth creation, something they really should study.

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