site.btaAgriculture Minister: There Was Risk of Ministry Losing EUR 120 Mln When Incumbents Took Office

When the current government came to power, the Ministry of Agriculture and Food was at risk of losing EUR 120 million. An action plan has therefore been outlined with measures to minimise this risk, Agriculture and Food Minister Kiril Vatev said  during the meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture, Food and Forestry on Wednesday. 

Deputy Minister Tanya Georgieva spoke in more detail about the measures taken under the Rural Development Programme (RDP), whose budget in 2021 was increased by EUR 900 million of public resources, bringing the total budget to EUR 3.8 billion. To date, 89.3% of the total financial resources have been contracted and 65.5% have been disbursed, she explained.

"From the very beginning, we started by updating 16 RDP notifications with a reallocation of funds in a way to redirect them to private measures for investments in farms and for the processing sector," Georgieva explained. 

According to her, an additional action that the Ministry has taken and will continue to do together with the State Fund Agriculture (SFA) is to revise the set of documents required at the stage of submitting applications for interim and final payments, so as to minimize documentation and attract more beneficiaries. 

Estimates for the loss are between EUR 30 and EUR 60 million, but the SFA expects this amount to be reduced further. The Committee's Chair, Desislava Taneva, noted that this would be the first loss since 2008.

SFA deputy executive director Ivana Ivanova cited statistics showing that last year a total of about 1,130 applications were submitted, while this year there are more than 1,900. In her words, this is an indicator that the measures taken are working. Ivanova pointed out that there are also projects that are in pre-trial proceedings, and the SFA cannot make payments under them. These are worth nearly EUR 11 million.