About 25 percent of rural businesses in the United Kingdom could go bankrupt if the country leaves the European Union without a deal, President of the London-based Country Land and Business Association (CLA) Tim Breitmeyer told the Guardian newspaper in an interview published on Friday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th September, 2019) About 25 percent of rural businesses in the United Kingdom could go bankrupt if the country leaves the European Union without a deal, President of the London-based Country Land and business Association (CLA) Tim Breitmeyer told the Guardian newspaper in an interview published on Friday.According to Breitmeyer, the possibility of a no-deal Brexit would lead to increased tariffs on exports and cheap imported food flooding the market, while farmers would not be strong enough to resist this shock. At the same time, the CLA president pointed out that rural areas overwhelmingly voted in favor of Brexit, presumably as a "protest vote for the fact that rural Britain got abandoned."
"Agriculture is not making very much money. In many cases, they are losing [money] without the single farm payment [subsidy]. If you have a tariff to add to your problems, if you have increased costs to add to your problems, it is only going to make matters worse and tip some businesses over the top. Now I do not know whether that is 15 or 25 percent but I am absolutely sure there will be quite a few farming businesses for which it actually just tips them into receivership," the CLA president said.
Breitmeyer called on the government to support farmers and protect them from new tariffs, and encourage people to buy domestic products instead of imported ones. Moreover, he said that since farmers who wanted to diversify their production were deterred by the lack of fast internet connection, London should take measures to extend broadband.
In August, UK consultative company The Andersons Centre warned that national farming profitability would drop by 18 percent in the event of a no-deal, claiming that the best policy was to secure a concrete arrangement with the bloc, which remains the country's largest market for agriculture. The report also called for more clarity on what government assistance farmers could hope to receive. Meanwhile, in July, Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged that farmers would get the post-Brexit support they needed.
Brexit has been postponed several times amid the country's failure to internally negotiate the divorce terms and is now scheduled to take place on October 31. Johnson is currently confronted by strong opposition at home over his overt determination to pull the United Kingdom out of the bloc by the deadline, even if that meant doing so without a deal.
