Unofficial trade in wheat reaches 40% in Bulgaria

“Unofficial trade in wheat reached 40% in Bulgaria,” Zlati Zlatev, Director of the National Grain and Feed Service (NGFS), told klassa.bg. According to analyses of the department to the Bulgarian Ministry of Agriculture and Food, the bread-grain balance shows that the agricultural commodity is mostly sold without documents along the agricultural chain, including millers, bakers and traders, thus avoiding the payment of VAT to the state. In a BNR broadcast Zlatev said that these were small producers with 1,000-2,000 decares of land, who did not register their produce. In order to establish control in these cases, the Director of NGFS proposed linking agricultural subsidies with the amount of the produce. So far, subsidies have been linked only with the arable land.

“Special services and control bodies must know the exact percentage of the informal trade in grain,” Angel Vukodinov, Chairman of the National Grain Producers Association, told klassa.bg. He said that no serious producers were engaged in informal trade.

“Trade without documents is not common practice, but there are some unscrupulous branch representatives,” Kostadin Marinov from the Bulgarian Association of Grain and Feed Traders said in an interview with BNR. He added that the best way to curb abuses was reverse VAT charging where the tax was paid by the buyer.

According to Zlati Zlatev, producers and traders are not deliberately inspected and at present further 1,995,000 tons of grain could be exported from Bulgaria.

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