3-year Plan to Send 1.3 million Tons of Rice to North

The government is pushing ahead with a three-year plan to support North Korea with 432 thousand tons of rice each year. The government is also planning to raise a special fund worth 800 billion won for seven years to reduce damages arising from the FTA to Korean farmers.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry briefed these plans to President Rho Moo-hyun today. In the briefing, the ministry unveiled a three-year plan to provide 432 thousand tons of rice each year to reduce surplus rice and support North Korea in a humanitarian way. The three-year total will amount to 1.296 tons. The ministry will also send one thousand tons of powdered milk to the North in addition to the rice shipment.

“We are consulting with the Ministry of Unification to hold a high-ranking official meeting with the North for rice aid,” Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Kim Young-jin said. The ministry is also planning to reduce paddy fields by 50 thousand ha by 2005 to allow for the continued rice surplus. Currently, rice is cultivated on 1.3 million ha every year.

As a follow-up measure of the FTA, the ministry will raise a special fund worth 800 billion won from government contributions and private donations to support farmers in changing agricultural species, modernizing facilities and expanding farm scale. The ministry will also loosen conditions of major loans from a 3-year deferment and 5-year repayment to a 5-year deferment and 15-year repayment. Annual interest on these loans will also be reduced from 3-4% to 1.5%.

Together with these measures, the ministry will introduce a pension system to reduce the number of small and aging farming households and provide financial support for purchasing farmland to farmers with more than 2 ha of land. The ministry will propose the “Rural Area Welfare Act” to improve welfare of agricultural areas and extend the rural special tax that will expire in 2004 for additional financial resources. The ministry will put emphasis on negotiations to maintain the status of the developing country in WTO`s Doha Development Agenda agricultural negotiations.

Eun-Woo Lee libra@donga.com