Bulgaria's State Fund Agriculture (SFA) has resumed payments for projects under the European Union's Sapard pre-accession aid programme that have been frozen at the request of the European Commission, Dnevnik daily reported on October 14. The fund is only paying out the Government's co-financing share of money, with the EC yet to decide whether to lift the moratorium on payments of European funds.

The EC asked Bulgaria to stop payments earlier this year after numerous irregularities were found in the implementation of the programme.

At a news conference on October 14, SAF executive director Atanas Kunchev said that 30 projects had received funds.

A total of 809 projects are expected to receive funding through Sapard. Of these, 474 were due to receive 200 million leva from the EU, Kunchev said. The total amount provided for all projects by Sapard was 307 million leva. According to Kunchev, the EC allowed Bulgaria to resume co-financing payments because of the successful completion of Sapard’s action plan adopted earlier by the Government.