Farming subsidies good for profit

Although posting losses in the last two quarters of 2003, chemical fertilisers producer Azomures Targu Mures still managed to log the highest profit and turnover of the last four years. Azomures posted, as preliminary financial data show, net profit of 407bn ROL (10.8 million euros) and 6,121bn ROL (163 million euros) turnover. If calculated in ROL, the company’s profit was over three times higher than in the year before, while sales progressed by 48%. The inflationary rate in the period was of 14.1%. The growth was mainly fuelled by the subsidies granted by the State to the small farmers to buy fertilisers, which helped boost results of all Romanian chemical fertilisers makers. The subsidies amounted to $82 last year. Unlike the other producers, Azomures’ significant improvement in financial results was also due, as the management says, to significant orders from the US for a new type of fertiliser it had just started to make last year. ZF