The PSD regretted this Wednesday that the Government took more than a month to appoint a new Secretary of State for Agriculture and criticized what it considers as “messiness” by Minister Maria do Céu Antunes.
“There is not a week in which the Minister of Agriculture does not commit a mess and, in this specific case, it took a month and a half to appoint the Secretary of State for Agriculture”, defended João Moura, vice-president of the PSD parliamentary group, speaking to journalists in parliament.
The deputy referred to a new controversy involving this ministry, after this Tuesday the Confederation of Farmers of Portugal (CAP) was offended “by the exclusion” of the monitoring committee of the Strategic Plan for the Common Agricultural Policy (PEPAC ), with the Government clarifying that this is an oversight that will be corrected.
“The Ministry of Agriculture already came to assume that it was a lapse, but it is a regrettable lapse when CAP is one of the most important confederations in the defense of the agriculture sector in Portugal”, he defended, adding that in the constitution of this committee there are also “associations that no longer have functions for almost 10 years and who constitute this monitoring committee”.
Agronomist engineer Gonçalo Caleia Rodrigues is the new Secretary of State for Agriculture and takes office today, at 5:45 pm, at Palácio de Belém. Gonçalo Caleia Rodrigues replaces Carla Alves, who resigned on 5 January, a few hours after taking office, following a court case involving her husband and former mayor of Vinhais.