Bulgarian Dairy Farmers to Stage National Protest, Block Road

Bulgarian dairy farmers will stage a national protest on Friday due to the low purchasing price of milk and the lack of state strategy and support for the livestock breeding sector.

The producers are intending to block the traffic on the road between the towns of Dimitrovgrad and Haskovo on two occasions.

The farmers met Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov and Agriculture Minister Desislava Taneva on Thursday and a second meeting is to take place next week.

They were promised that the state will allocate a further financial aid of BGN 26 M to stock breeders.

The state will also stimulate the purchase of Bulgarian dairy products through changes to the requirements of the Bulgarian State Standard (BDS).

Dairy farmers insist on the Bulgarian products to have a reduced Value Added Tax (VAT), daily Dnevnik reports.

According to the farmer Atanas Katsov, the crisis in the sector is going out of control as many of his colleagues have started to sell their animals.

The EU abolished milk quotas in the beginning of April, which opened the market for the import of cheap products.

Milk producers staged a protest in Brussels, expressing their concern that the abolition of quotas will push out small farms from the markets and benefit only the large producers.

The sector is further suffering from the ban imposed by Russia on the import of dairy products from the EU.

In case no urgent measures are taken, farmers foresee the closure of many Bulgarian farms until September at the latest.

Farmers invited Agriculture Minister Taneva and the Director of the State Fund Agriculture to attend the protest.