EU countries support increased aid to POSEI Canario in 54 million euros.

THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION WILL DEFINITELY APPROVE THE PLAN BY THE END OF APRIL.

An EU Management Committee has given approval to the request presented by the Spanish and Canary Islands authorities to increase the Posei budget, “for one year” through more state support.

This modification of the Program is retroactive to the 1 in January of 2009. The increase in the financial figure will be covered by regional or national funds and under state aid regulations..

However, This Committee has urged Spain – as interlocutor of the Autonomy- to present a plan on the restructuring of the tomato sector before the 1 August.

Within the plan to increase Posei support, The measures in favor of tomatoes presented more problems and delayed the EU ruling, since Brussels communicated last month that it needed even more clarifications.

Until now there was only one measure aimed at supporting the tomato sector, endowed with 9 million euros for foreign marketing. This help has been resized, reducing your token to 5,4 million at the same time that new aid has been planned for producers, endowed with 32 million which means a total of 37,4 millions allocated to this product.