National Program for the Rehabilitation of the Main Irrigation Infrastructure in Romania.

This National Program for the Rehabilitation of the Main Irrigation Infrastructure in Romania is a nationwide multi-sectoral policy document aimed at rehabilitation of the main irrigation infrastructure.
The scope of the National Program shall be to adapt agriculture to climate change and to reduce negative environmental impact, in particular droughts, floods and other natural disasters that have significant impact on the stability of production and national food security, thus limiting economic development opportunities despite the potential of agriculture. The implementation period of the National Program is 2016 - 2020.
The objectives shall be to rehabilitate irrigation structure on the surface of 2,006,941 ha, including basic pumping stations, discharge pipes, supply channels, distribution channels, waterworks, increasing efficiency of pumping stations from 40% to 80% and decreasing of water losses from 60% to 28%. The overall objective of the National Program is to rehabilitate the main irrigation infrastructure that will lead to the increase of the functional area of the viable and marginally economically viable area for 70% by 2020 and for 90% by 2030, and consists of rehabilitating the main infrastructure of irrigation from 86 viable facilities belonging to the public domain of the state, in the area of about 1.8 million ha, by the end of 2020. The specific objective of the Program is to increase the efficiency of basic pumping stations (fixed and floating) and re-pumping, elimination of water losses by infiltration from irrigation canals belonging to the public domain of the state and the elimination of the degradation of waterworks. Restoring existing irrigation capacity is a basic measure for the development of agricultural sector in Romania. Rehabilitation of the main irrigation infrastructure will lead to increasing the operating efficiencies of irrigation facilities with direct reflection in the reduction of tariff calculated per 1000 cubic meters of pumped water, which will create greater opportunities for farmers using water for irrigation.
The implementation of the National Program shall produce the following effects: (a) improving land productivity; and (b) increasing yield of agricultural crops per ha. Social impact - by carrying out the rehabilitation action, the vulnerability due to drought of the communities will be reduced, concerning population of 1,097,433 inhabitants in 190 localities.