Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zaveryukha called Wednesday for more state subsidies to agriculture in the 1995 budget, warning that domestic farmers could lose the market to imports unless they received more support from the government.


"Unless we support our producers and rely on them, output will collapse and we will become too dependent on foreign imports," he said, adding that imports from Western Europe had become more expensive because of subsidy cuts there.


Zaveryukha, the country's top agriculture official, said he had voted against the draft budget last week as a member of the parliament's lower chamber, the State Duma.


He reiterated the Agrarian Party's demand for state subsidies to enable farmers to buy fertilizers and fuel. The Agrarians, who had formed an alliance in the Duma strong enough to block the draft budget for a month, are demanding that a special 2 percent tax be imposed on all companies to pay for the subsidies.


The tax was scrapped when the Duma passed the first reading of the budget last week, but it can be reinstated before the draft reaches its fourth reading sometime next year.


Zaveryukha said that as of December, the government had only paid about 54 percent of the 18 trillion rubles ($5.08 billion) in subsidies it promised this year, though he added that the lack of funds had not affected production as drastically as expected. Most Russian farmers are still heavily dependent on government subsidies because they have little access to other forms of financing.


Agricultural production fell on average between 6 and 7 percent compared with last year, with the worst drop in production of sugar beets, which fell 48 percent, Zaveryukha said. Meat and dairy production is down by 7-8 percent due to shortages of feed, he said.The net grain harvest amounted to about 84 million tons -- enough, Zaveryukha said, to ensure supplies over next year. The stocks of potatoes and other vegetables collected this year were also sufficient, he said.


However, the federal grain reserve has only accumulated about 12 million tons out of the projected 25 million tons, while regional reserves currently have only 3 million tons out of the 11 million they were supposed to have purchased, Zaveryukha said. The government announced plans in early autumn to import about 6 million tons of grain this year, 5 million tons less than in the previous year.


Zaveryukha said the low stocks did not result from lack of funds, but from state managers' inability to adjust to the emerging free market for grain.


"An independent grain market is forming which is not controlled by the government, and God grant that it may go on that way," Zaveryukha said.