Ministry of Agriculture announces inspections of grain market operators

Cătălin Deacu

The state will soon begin investigations in the grain trade sector, in order to fight the rampant underground trade. The Ministry of Agriculture announced on Friday, in a press release, that its local Departments for Agriculture, together with county teams of the Fraud Squad and the Police Inspectorate, will carry out investigations of all companies that harvest, sell or transport grains. The investigations are scheduled for the July - October 2009 period. The investigations (ed. note: intended to verify compliance with grain market regulations) will be carried out in the counties of Giurgiu, Ialomiţa, Călăraşi, Dolj, Brăila, Constanţa, Teleorman, Timiş, Arad and Olt, although they may be extended to other counties as well.

• Verification of silo owners licenses

In the case of silo operators, the authorities will investigate whether they are licensed to store grain and whether they meet the minimum requirements for being involved in the grain trade. The inspectors will also verify sale-purchase contracts, service and custody contracts concluded by silo operators with their partners in the grain distribution chain.

Inspectors will also review the shipping manifests, as well as the accounting recognition of the supplied products: delivery notes, invoices, standardized acquisition logs, product quality cards for each shipment and stock cards.

Grain processors to be investigated as well

Inspectors will also check the licenses of processors and the sale and service contracts concluded by the former with their partners, as well as the shipping manifests for the grains transported from the harvesting point to the grain silos. Thus, processors will have to present delivery notes, invoices, acquisition logs, monthly inventory turnover reports, and the sale-purchase contracts for the products processed.

• Bakers" licenses under scrutiny

A third target of these investigations are bread and milling products producers, which buy and store grains themselves. The first step will be identifying companies producing bread and milling products without proper licenses, as well as whether they meet the requirements of the production licenses they were awarded. Inspectors will investigate the permits for storage areas, as well as whether companies have adequate storage spaces, as well as the sale-purchase contracts for raw materials and how companies sell their output.

Inspectors will also check delivery notes, invoices, monthly inventory turnover reports, the accounting recognition of production realized, stored or sold and will observe contraventions.