Bulgaria's dairy producers are unsatisfied with the new agreement signed with the Agriculture and Food Ministry on the state subsidies for quality milk, industry representatives told a news conference on March 12 2008.
The agreement was signed after numerous protests by the dairy producers, who demanded bigger state subsidies. According to the Cabinet, the subsidies hike was impossible, because their amount was co-ordinated with the European Commission.
But on March 7, Agriculture Minister Nihat Kabil and representatives of the National Milk Board and National Association of Milk Producers signed an agreement for bigger subsidies. The subsidy will be of 0.2 leva for a litre of cow and goat’s milk and of 0.25 leva per litre of sheep and buffalo’s milk.
But at least some dairy producers believe the board was not authorised to sign the agreement, especially since it was done without the knowledge of most farmers, producers claimed.
Adrian Tsakonski, the initiator of one of the numerous dairy branch protests, which featured a cattle rally, said that there was no date of signing and no deadlines for paying off the subsidies in the agreement. According to Atanas Kutsov, head of the dairy producers’ regional organisation in Plovdiv, Finance Minister Plamen Oresharski and Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev should have signed the agreement, but their signatures were missing. Despite all the protests, what we see is complete indifference among the officials, Kutsov said.
Another problem for the dairy producers was that the dairy farms processing their milk were decreasing the prices they paid to producers. The prices in north-western Bulgaria had already dropped to 0.5 leva per litre. “It turns out that half a litre of mineral water is more expensive than a litre of quality milk”, the producers said, threatening to protest against the dairy farms. It was not right for some 200 or 300 registered dairy processors to decide the fate of 100 000 producers. An organisation, independent from the processors, should exist to regulate the prices, they said.
They also complained that the subsidies for fodder were late. The animals get ill more easily if they do not receive enough fodder. We demand that subsidies, small as they are, be paid on time, they said.
Tsakonski said that the authorities were concealing the fact that the number of cattle and farm animals was decreasing. On a mass scale the farmers were cutting down the number of animals they breed, he said. “Absolutely everything is working against the producer” in Bulgaria, he said.
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