Agriculture funding measures in Lithuania: demand and opportunities

Abstract

Agriculture is a distinctive field of business, which is distinguished by its competitive environment, amount of the EU support, seasonal impacts, and entrepreneurship of this sector. After evaluating the strive and wish of agricultural sector to become financially autonomous and stay competitive, various agriculture funding programmes are presented to Lithuanian agricultural business entities whose purpose is to provide more financial freedom and options while planning daily activities and development of agriculture. Even during the recession, favourable conditions for making the investments were ensured for agricultural sector: direct assignations, preferential credits, credit with the state’s guarantee, favourable funding packages for agriculture from commercial banks etc. This paper analyses the trends of direct assignations for agriculture, evaluates the absorption of the EU support for Rural Development Programme, trends of preferential credits, and credits with guarantee granted for agriculture, and, finally, it explores the share of credits issued to agricultural and forestry entities in all credits’ portfolio issued from credit financial institutions and its trends.