In his interview for Dnevne Novine, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Milutin Simovic said the “Buy local” project is expected to help citizens better understand the importance of purchasing domestic products.
“By opting to buy a local product, every citizen is essentially helping create new jobs, making existing jobs safer and better paid, improve the competitiveness of domestic products and, finally, growing our collective purchasing power”, said Minister Simovic.
As he stressed, the goal of this new govt’s project is to make domestic products present, visible and available to all consumers, both domestic and tourists. Minister also added this would contribute to the reduction of the foreign trade deficit.
Two of the most famous and thus already protected Montenegrin products are the cheese from Pljevlja and ham from Njegusi, but Minister reported another two products are currently in the protection procedure: Montenegrin beef prosciutto and Montenegrin cured sheep.
“It is a way to give recognizable domestic products a significantly better market value, and a higher profit to local farmers who produce them. In addition, the recognition of the area in which the protected product is produced is enhanced. It is important to have as many Montenegrin products as possible on the map of EU protected products, for when we become a member. We are working intensively to prepare other groups of producers and all products that have the potential for this kind of protection, such as olive oil, honey, leaf cheese from Kolasin, wine, schnapps etc”, concluded Simovic.
