Focus on deadline for farming subsidy payments
The Scottish Government has said it is doing all it can to make European subsidy payments to farmers by the midnight deadline.
Rural Economy Secretary Fergus Ewing said the vast majority'' of farmers and crofters would receive their Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) payments by the end of Friday June 30.
Mr Ewing has told MSPs he expects about 90% of payments to have been completed by the cut-off point.
Ministers have applied to the European Commission for an extension to the deadline which is currently under consideration.
It is the second year in a row the Scottish Government has been forced to seek such an extension after the introduction of a new £178 million IT system caused delays.
A European Commission source said: The commission is in contact with the Scottish Government and is continuing to consider the case made for an extension in the CAP payment deadline.
We understand that there was a significant acceleration of payments last year and this week, and we wait to see what the execution rate is at the end of the day.''
Mr Ewing said: We have made a clear commitment to do all we can to make the 2016 payments by the end of today and we are doing all we can to deliver as many payments as possible.
I expect the vast majority of farmers and crofters will receive all their basic and greening payments by the end of today.
Although it is not possible at this stage to guarantee precisely the level of payments that will be made, the latest figures are showing that we have made progress.
As of close of business last night, we have made BPS, greening and young farmer payments to 15,991 farmers and crofters valued at #331 million.
This represents around 87.3% of expected total payments for those schemes.
It's important to recognise that through the national loan scheme and payments made to date, the vast majority of farmers and crofters have received their money.''
He added: We recognise that while we are making progress, we still need to do better.
Our priority remains completing payments for farmers and crofters as quickly as possible in the coming weeks and officials are working incredibly hard to do just that - and will continue to do so beyond today to make as many outstanding payments as quickly as possible.''
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