site.btaUPDATED Caretaker Cabinet and Industry Organisations to Seek Solutions to Most Pressing Problems in Agricultural Sector

Caretaker Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev, Deputy Prime Minister Lyudmila Petkova and the newly appointed Agriculture and Food Minister Georgi Tahov will meet today with representatives of agricultural sector organizations in the country, the cabinet press service said. The meeting will take place at 5 p.m. in the Granite Hall of the Council of Ministers.

The two sides will discuss issues related to the sector with the aim that the government, in dialogue with the sectoral organizations, will urgently find solutions to the most pressing problems, the Cabinet press service said.

State aid for farmers in relation to Russia's war against Ukraine is among the topics of discussion. The deadline for the payment of funds to farmers expired on April 22. At the end of February, the State Fund for Agriculture announced that between March 20 and April 9, farmers could apply under the state aid schemes "Aid to support the liquidity of farmers to overcome the negative economic impact of the Russian aggression against Ukraine" and "Aid to support the liquidity of farmers producing grain and oilseed crops to overcome the negative economic impact of the Russian aggression against Ukraine". The Board of the Fund took this decision in fulfilment of the commitments made by the Nikolay Denkov Cabinet in the memorandum signed with the farmers. The agreement between the government and representatives of the agricultural sector was signed on February 12. It came after a series of protests by farmers demanding a review of the proposal for the distribution of aid and the budget, which would prevent mass bankruptcies in Bulgarian agriculture, and clear guarantees for legislative changes to ensure the sustainability of the sector.

The Bulgarian Agrarian Chamber (BAC), in a letter to the president, the prime minister, the minister of agriculture and food and the executive director of the State Fund for Agriculture (SFA) sent in mid-April, asked whether there was a risk for the payment of the state aid to farmers in the agreed amount and terms. The reason for these concerns was a statement by the caretaker prime minister that the financial means for the aid had not been secured, which was one of the motives for the requested change of the agriculture minister, BAC pointed out at the time in a statement sent to the media.