A press conference was organized in İstanbul in order to inform the public about the new applications in State Supported Agricultural Insurance System to be implemented in the new year, its development for the last 11 years, and its future targets. The conference was hosted by İsmail Kemaloğlu, Chairman of the Agricultural Insurance Pool (TARSİM); and Dr. Ahmet Genç, Vice Chairman.

In his statement during the conference, İsmail Kemaloğlu underlined that the system progressed remarkably since its foundation in 2006; adding that it became an example for the world as one of the most successful public-private partnership organizations. Kemaloğlu said: “As we all know; climate changes and natural catastrophes make devastating impacts on agricultural activities and cause very high amounts of losses. TARSİM began activities with the aim of providing insurance for risks that threaten the agricultural sector in our country, and ensuring the sustainability of agricultural production while decreasing the revenue loss of the producers. By doing so, TARSİM has facilitated the transition from crisis management to risk management. Since the foundation of Agricultural Insurance Pool, its portfolio has grown steadily, scope of coverage expanded with each passing year, catastrophic losses such as draught have been included in the coverage, and state support for the producers has continued increasingly. In this regard, we can say that TARSİM has been the most rapidly developing agricultural insurance system in the world. I would hereby like to thank all parties that have contributed to this achievement, particularly the Ministry and Undersecretariat of Treasury.”

“We have reached a premium volume of 6.5 billion TL, issued 9 million policies, insured 136 decares of land, 127 thousand greenhouses, 9 million cattle, sheep and goats, and 7 million beehives for the past 11 years. The value of these insured agricultural assets has reached 124 billion TL. We have received 2 million claims from our producers, and paid 4 billion TL for them after evaluation.”

Kemaloğlu talked about the changes for the new year, and added as follows: “We regard last year’s initiation of Province-Based Draught Productivity Insurance for wheat as a milestone for the system. This year, we have added new crops in the coverage of Draught Insurance. This is not the only change for this year. We have introduced changes in Poultry Insurance that will please our producers. Epidemics and most of the notifiable diseases have been included in the disease coverage of Cattle, Sheep and Goats and Poultry Insurance products.”

Dr. Ahmet Genç also shared his assessment during the press conference and stated that our country bore a serious potential of agricultural assets to be insured. He stressed that the rise of insurance will continue to increase in this area.