Minister Grekov: We work actively to pay 280 million EUR by the year-end

“We are doing our best not to lose money under the Rural Development Programme. We have to utilize another 280 million EUR by the year-end”. This statement was made by agriculture and food minister Prof. Dimitar Grekov in a broadcasting of the Bulgarian National TV. He was definite that all experts in the Ministry and in the State Fund Agriculture – Paying Agency (SFA-РА) knew their tasks and realized that the time was short. “Over 70 specialists have been commissioned to Sofia from the district directorates of the Fund and from the regional offices of the Ministry, in order to process even at a greater speed the documents of the farmers”, explained minister Grekov.

 

In his words, the current situation is particularly distressful, because only 90 million BGN were utilized during the first 9 months of the year, while only in two months 278 million EUR have to be paid. “You can understand that we have to work at full speed if we are not to lose any money. It is a typical Bulgarian quality to summon our strength at the end of the year. It is however a fact that in the beginning of the year a very small percent of the Euro funds were allocated, then there was a change of governments, and the caretaker government did not organize the work in a good way. In the recent years, a lot of branches of agriculture were neglected”, minister Dimitar Grekov said openly.

 

He stated as a fact that under Measure 511 “Technical Assistance” of the Programme there were unpaid funds for activities already performed. “I instructed the experts in MoAF to examine all old contracts and they found 95% of them correct. There were however projects of companies, which EC considered on its own following publications in the Bulgarian media. This made the inspection necessary and consequently, the payment of funds under the media contracts was delayed”, said minister Grekov. He explained further that the matter with the media contracts concluded in previous years by MoAF was referred also to the Bulgarian Prosecutor’s Office.

 

Replying a journalist question concerning the communication between EC, MoAF and SFA-PA, minister Grekov explained that for more than one and a half year important letters related to updating the programme and to the media contracts of the ministry were not replied. “The genesis of the problem can be traced back to June 2012, when EC sent letters concerning irregularities with the media contracts of the former management. At that time, director of the fund was Rumen Porozhanov. He told me before leaving that he had one of the letters for a long time with him but did not explain why he did not present it to me for more than 2 months”, commented further minister Grekov.