Berisha’s interest on the olive project

TIRANA, Nov 9 – Prime Minister Sali Berisha held a task force meeting to discuss on the progress of implementation work of the olive tree project which he considered the greatest project of the current four year mandate targeting to plant 20 million olive trees countrywide.
Berisha assured his government’s support for all the relevant structures that deal with implementation of that project and asked them to find the proper schemes for stimulation of planting of the olive trees and the successful realization of the ambitious project.
Agriculture Minister Genc Ruli said that the support given for 2009 about planting of the new olive groves has been very efficient while the demand for new plants have been twice higher as compared to 2008. In 2009 there were allocated 104 million lek for the olive sector from a total of 1.1 billion lek to the agriculture sector.
Authorities said there were identified about 17,000 hectares that could be rehabilitated for olive trees.
They also set the structure of the varieties that will be planted, according to which, from 20 million olive trees that will be planted in total, 65 percent will be from the local varieties and 35 percent from the foreign varieties.