State Fund Agriculture (SFA) was expected to start in December a series of tenders on public orders for the supply of flour, rice and sugar by Bulgarian producers that would be paid with European Union (EU) money, the Ministry of Agriculture said, as quoted by Sega daily on October 31.

The food deals would be funded through EU structural funds grants, which had become available after Bulgaria joined the EU in January 2007. The so-called Intervention Agency, also under EU requirements, would act as the intermediary on the deals. The agency was to detach each year certain quantities of foodstuffs to be granted to the poorest Bulgarians. Under the scheme, poor people would receive each month two kilograms of flour, and a kilogram of both sugar and rice.

As long as this year the agency’s warehouses were empty, the country would get funding from the EU amounting to 1 990 461 euro for buying flour and 1 768 251 for rice. Part of the sugar would be supplied by the Hungarian intervention agency, and Bulgaria was to get 3 125 000 euro for sugar.

The food would be distributed among the poorest Bulgarians by foundations that would be chosen on a competitive basis. They would be required to cover a number of criteria, like having food-distribution points all over the country. SFA would cover the distributors’ transportation and administrative cost by paying them one per cent of the value of food they had made available to the citizens.

Foods from the “intervention reserve” would be granted to categories of socially disadvantaged people that were currently supported by the state with power supply aids, the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy said, as quoted by Sega. For example, single parents with children of under 18 would have access to the free food if their income would not exceed by more than 208 per cent the guaranteed minimum income for the country, which was currently 55 leva. This meant that the income of such single parents would have to be no more than 114 leva.