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To overcome the crisis caused by COVID-19 and mitigate its consequences, the government allocated 45.5 million euros from the state contingency budget to support the agricultural and food production sectors in 2020. The State Audit Office publishes an interim report on the allocated 35.5 million euros, which, based on the calculations of the Ministry of Agriculture, was provided for three support programs and of which 84% was spent. When auditing the calculation and estimation of the funds’ demand, the State Audit Office had to conclude that they were based on the occurrence of a significantly more negative scenario than later turned out to be. The actual decrease in revenue of the supported sectors was not at all as large as initially forecasted by the Ministry. Consequently, support payments from the state budget indemnified for the decrease in sectoral revenues and even increased revenues for certain agricultural sectors compared to the corresponding periods of previous years.
