"Milkos" faces shutdown if bankers remain deaf!

Direct damage from floods to the Milkos dairy farm on plots in Spreča is around one million marks, said Adin Fakić, director of the Milkos dairy farm, in an interview with the Bosnian news agency Patria. He said that replanting will cost this company another million KM, doubling the costs.

On the other hand, credit debts represent an additional burden for businessmen who suffered damage in the floods.

- We demand a moratorium on loans, and we have already submitted this request to relevant institutions, because if this does not happen, I do not want to imagine what will happen. Our books are available, it can easily be checked how much material we purchased for sowing and how expensive everything is. I fear that if the banks do not listen, both agriculture and the economy will suffer. The state must protect businessmen, i.e., grant a deferral of loan payments, or they can bury us - Fakić points out for NAP.

The farm in Spreča has about 800 hectares of land under lease, and in the floods, 490 hectares of wheat, grass-clover mixture, and corn were lost. Fakić emphasizes that due to the lack of quality animal feed, health problems will arise in animals, which will also affect reproduction.

- In addition to this damage, a problem has also emerged with the lack of quality animal feed. We already have two liters less milk per cow, which is about 2,000 liters daily, and 60,000 liters of milk per month. This trend will last until around September, October, when we expect yields from the corn we are now replanting. The price of feed will be higher than usual, and this will affect the price of milk - Fakić emphasized.

The only positive thing in the whole story is that their cooperatives are mostly from hilly-mountainous areas and thus avoided the floods, but cooperatives in the area of Kalesija and Živinice suffered consequences.

- For a small farmer, this is terrible. We offered our cooperatives who produce their own animal feed to do this together, to give them seeds and fertilizer, but we cannot help everyone - said Fakić, once again appealing to banks to ease their burden in these difficult times.

Incidentally, the Milkos company, despite its own damage, sent aid to the affected population of Olovo, Maglaj, Doboj, Ključ, Bosanski Šamac, Sanski Most in the very first days, and lowered the prices of some of its products, writes Patria.