There are no problems to import strategic products such as flour, unrefined sunflower oil and sugar, says Rumen Smilevski, owner of the Veles company "Malina", through which he has been importing these strategic food products for many years, and recently his company is also a shareholder in the company "Crystal 1923", formerly "Blagoj Gyorev", known to the people as Veleska oil mill. Speaking to "Sloboden Pechat", he says that he sees increased interest among farmers and says that it is important for Macedonia to produce its own food as much as possible.

Smilevski says that currently "Crystal" produces edible oil 100 percent from domestic sunflower and that they are making efforts to interest as many farmers as possible to turn to this strategic crop.

- The "Crystal" factory reduced the price of edible oil and now it is sold for 4 denars below the production price. The purpose of doing this is to pay all the sunflower producers who submitted the crop, by the New Year, as we have been doing until now. This time we bought over 10.000 tons of sunflower, so we need more money to pay the farmers. Instead of taking loans and paying interest, we decided to sell the edible oil at a cheaper price than the production one - says Smilevski.

He explains that once the factory bought 40.000 tons of sunflower, but also that it has a much larger capacity for processing.

- We are happy that the sunflower is returning to the fields and we want to invest and encourage even more planting. In that direction, there are also good measures from the state that farmers use, and from us they have a guaranteed purchase and a negotiated price for sunflowers. This success story is already spreading among farmers, so I am sure that next year we will have even more domestic sunflower - says Smilevski.

Crystal 1923 is the only factory in the country that can produce edible sunflower oil, while others import unrefined oil that they refine. When it runs out of domestic sunflower, Crystal can import sunflower, but it also has the technology to process the unrefined cooking oil that would be imported.

After the news that Russia is blocking the export of grain along the Black Sea, news of an increase in the price of grain is coming from the stock markets. Flour from Serbia, from where we import large quantities, is particularly interesting for Macedonia.

- I import flour from Serbia and I can say that what I talked about a month ago, analyzing the situation, has come true, namely that flour from Serbia will become more expensive by about 10 percent. That's exactly what happened, its price increased from 420 euros per ton to 460 euros per ton - says Smilevski.

Serbian media reported that there is an increase in sugar prices. But Smilevski says that we import more from Bosnia and currently sugar is cheaper here than in Serbia.

- Regarding the price of sugar, we have a price reduction of about 1,5 percent. In Serbia the price is 1 euro per kilogram, here it is a little lower, somewhere around 55 denars. We have an import agreement with Bosnia, it offers large quantities, and it also has cheaper electricity, which is why the product from there is cheaper - explains Smilevski.