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- The limit was reached: the benefits for the transportation of grain and fish ended in two months
The limit was reached: the benefits for the transportation of grain and fish ended in two months
The benefits for farmers for the transportation of grain and fish in 2025 ended in two months. The Ministry of Agriculture has suspended the acceptance of new applications due to the exhaustion of limits. The loss of preferential tariffs may become a rather acute problem for grain producers from Siberia and the Far East, representatives of the agricultural business told Izvestia. The inefficiency of the mechanism for distributing transportation financing was also reported in the fishing industry. A year and a half ago, President Vladimir Putin already instructed to allocate additional funds to subsidize the transportation of fish products.
Why did the limits on preferential transportation end so quickly
The Ministry of Agriculture has stopped accepting applications from agricultural producers for preferential rail transportation of grain, fish and fish products (pollock, pink salmon, sardine and mackerel). The annual limits on it ended in two months of 2025, Izvestia found out.
Thus, with the grain transportation plan in the amount of 1.92 million tons, by February 26, the balance was 15.4 tons. With a transportation limit of 70,000 tons for fish and fish products, 10.6 tons remained for the same period. In 2024, approximately such remnants were recorded only by September.
The Ministry of Agriculture confirmed the termination of applications to Izvestia. At the same time, they noted that in 2025, about 8.3 billion rubles were allocated from the federal budget to support preferential transportation, which is 2 billion rubles more than a year earlier.
Based on the ministry's documents, in addition to grain and fish, preferential transportation of agricultural products includestransportation of mineral fertilizers (nitrogen, potassium, phosphorous, mixed), vegetable products (fresh cabbage, onions and seedlings, fresh beets, fresh carrots, fresh tomatoes, fresh cucumbers, fresh potatoes), oilseed processing products, grain processing products (wheat flour, rye, rye-wheat).
— According to the distribution of available volumes indicated on the website of the Ministry of Agriculture of Russia, transportation by rail at a discounted rate of about 2 million tons of grain crops and 70 thousand tons of fish is planned for 2025. At the moment, the ministry has approved applications for the entire specified volume, and therefore the acceptance of new applications has been suspended, the ministry said.
They also noted that if the senders partially fail to take advantage of preferential transportation according to approved applications, the funds will be restored and the Ministry of Agriculture will resume the selection of applications for preferential transportation of grain and fish.
Russian Railways "Izvestia" that cargoes for which the state has decided to grant subsidies have a higher priority when accepting applications for transportation in limited directions.
— Subsidies are an incentive for shippers of agricultural products and have a positive impact on transportation volumes. For its part, Russian Railways is ready to provide such transportation," the company's press service told Izvestia.
Will the absence of preferential transportation affect prices
Meanwhile, agricultural producers are already concerned about the situation with the end of the limits. Representatives of the fishing industry have noticed that the catch of some species of fish that are popular and accessible to Russians has not even begun.
— Subsidizing the rail transportation of fish products has not become an effective tool for increasing supplies to the domestic market. The reasons are as follows. The first is that the amount of financing is insignificant and is quickly spent on all types of subsidized cargo, so there are crumbs left for fish. The second is that budget limits are not reserved by the manager of funds in relation to fishing routes, therefore the main fishing seasons of the "fish hits" of the Russian market — herring, pink salmon and sardine iwasi — begin when budget limits have already been spent, the president of the All—Russian Association of Fishermen (VARPE) told Izvestia German Zverev.
According to him, the paradox lies in the fact that financial resources that are collected from the fishing industry through auctions are not used to stabilize prices in the domestic market by expanding the program of subsidizing the supply of fish products.
— Example: in February of this year alone, fishermen paid 28 billion rubles for crab auctions in Murmansk, but not a penny of these funds were used to expand targeted budget limits for the rail transportation of fish products," the industry representative explained.
For socially significant fish species, preferential delivery, and in fact, reducing the cost of it, is an important condition for maintaining affordability, Alexey Buglak, president of the Association of Pollock Miners (ADM), told Izvestia.
— With a fish price of 80-100 rubles per 1 kg, shipping costs of 25-27 rubles are very significant. Pollock was included in the list of subsidized agricultural cargoes at the end of 2021. The support measure proved to be in high demand and allowed to increase the supply of fish to the domestic market in 2022-2023. In 2024, the right decision was made to expand the list of fish species for transportation, but in order for the measure not to spread and have an effect, budget allocations had to be increased accordingly. But in fact, this year they have remained at the level of previous years," the business representative said.
Earlier, Vladimir Putin instructed the government to increase the allocation of additional funds in 2023-2026 to subsidize the rail transportation of fish products. The President proposed to do this, including based on the need to include salmon species in the list of subsidized products.
This year, the limit on the volume of fish transportation was raised from 31.49 thousand to 70 thousand tons. From February 1, the compensation tariff for preferential transportation remains 50%, instead of 100%, as reported in the industry. And the increase in financing of preferential transportation of agricultural products was distributed across all types of agricultural products, not just fish.
The People's Farmer Association is concerned about the situation with the end of grain transportation limits.
— This measure is one of the most targeted and is aimed at supporting those regions that, on the one hand, do not have sufficient export opportunities, and on the other hand, they fully provide themselves with grain and need to export products. Due to the remoteness of these regions, their logistical costs are much higher than those of others. The reduced freight rate leveled this situation. For our colleagues from Siberia and the Far East, the loss of preferential tariffs can become a rather acute problem,— Stanislav Sankeev, executive director of the association, told Izvestia.
— There are two points in the fact that limits suddenly ended like this. First, the organization of the planning of the distribution of funds, in which they ended in two months. Secondly, the Ministry of Finance probably played a role here, limiting the allocation of money for these purposes," Alexander Korbut, an independent grain market expert, told Izvestia.
At the same time, according to him, this support measure is in great demand among farmers, since all grain grown outside the Urals has no market.
— Therefore, products from there need to be transported to Central Russia. I hope that, as in previous years, when such a situation arose, money will be added for these purposes," the expert noted.
Georgy Ostapkovich, Director of the HSE Center for Economic Research and Economic Analysis, believes that the allocation of additional funds for the new limits will depend on the Ministry of Finance, not the Ministry of Agriculture. If money is not found for these purposes, the lack of preferential transportation can lead to shortages and higher prices for these goods, these are the laws of economics, the expert emphasized. At the same time, he believes that the government will eventually meet agricultural producers halfway in order to prevent such a situation.
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