`In Italy, Tax Reduction Will Help Olive Growers - Olive Oil Times
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In Italy, Tax Reduction Will Help Olive Growers

By Luciana Squadrilli
Sep. 2, 2013 09:16 UTC

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Massimo Gargano, chair­man of the Italian olive grow­ers’ con­sor­tium Unaprol

The lat­est deci­sion of chang­ing and reduc­ing the IMU (the munic­i­pal tax for the real prop­erty) which was approved with much trou­ble and effort by the Italian Government in the last few days, will prob­a­bly have pos­i­tive con­se­quences on the next olive har­vest, since the tax on real estate has been com­pletely can­celled for agri­cul­tural prop­er­ties.

Massimo Gargano, chair­man of the grow­ers’ union Unaprol, said, ​“The can­cel­la­tion of agri­cul­tural IMU will allow the Italian olive grow­ing farms to rein­vest those assets in the next olive har­vest. But we also have to ward off the VAT rise, since it would have neg­a­tive effects both on our export and inter­nal con­sump­tion.”

Gargano’s com­ments come just as the upcom­ing olive har­vest is fore­cast to be a strong one. ​“We should become quicker and more lively to act on the mar­ket­place, com­bin­ing the new oppor­tu­nity given by the reduc­tion of invest­ment and pro­duc­tion costs and the high qual­ity of Made in Italy as it can be guar­an­teed by the Unaprol European Traceabilty Program.” Using the QR code, the pro­gram tracks over 600 grow­ing groups includ­ing about 7,000 olive farms all over Italy whose pro­duc­tion line is com­pletely traced.

Gargano made his remarks dur­ing the lat­est Festival delle Storie held August 23 – 30 in the small vil­lages of Alvito and Picinisco, not far from Rome. This was a spell­bind­ing cul­tural exhi­bi­tion ded­i­cated to music, lit­er­a­ture and per­form­ing arts that also hosted the cook­ing show by two famous Italian chefs, Niko Romito and Gennaro Esposito who used extra vir­gin olive oil cer­ti­fied by the Unaprol trace­abil­ity sys­tem to unveil all the tricks and secrets of cook­ing with extra vir­gin olive oil.

And today, September 2nd, another meet­ing orga­nized by Unaprol took place in Puegnago del Garda near the beau­ti­ful Garda lake — one of Italy’s most suit­able ter­roirs for olive grow­ing — to dis­cuss Europe’s new Common Agricultural Policy and its effects on Italian olive oil pro­duc­tion. The 37th edi­tion of the local Valtenesi Fair also was the occa­sion for an in-depth analy­sis about Italian extra vir­gin olive oil, since olive grow­ing and oil pro­duc­tion are essen­tial assets for the local land­scape and econ­omy.

Both events made good forums for pre­sent­ing Unaprol’s sur­veys about last year’s olive oil con­sump­tion in Italy, where more than 217 mil­lions liters were sold in 2012, for a value of 850 mil­lions euros. Extra vir­gin olive oil accounted for 72 per­cent of the sales, while the olive oil grade accounted for 13 per­cent. The ​“100% Italian”-labelled extra vir­gin olive oil accounted for 12 per­cent of sales. Organic and PDO extra vir­gin olive oils per­formed mod­estly, slip­ping from 2011 lev­els both in value and vol­ume.


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