Farmers in Bulgaria threaten with protests over demands for an additional 147 million leva state funding for farmers for the 2008 Budget.

The sum would be co-funding to direct payments from the European Union, National Grain Producers Association representative Georgi Milev said.

Bulgarian news agency BTA quoted Milev as saying that currently no such state payments were included in the draft-budget 2008. The farmers demanded the funding to be five leva per 1000 sq m.

In a number of EU member states the state co-funding for farmers was 15 euro per 1000 sq m, Milev said.

Agriculture provided 10 per cent of the GDP and farmers’ demand for state co-funding of 0.5 per cent of the GDP was ‘reasonable’, Milev said.

Allocation of 110 million leva to the tobacco industry and zero leva to the grain production was ‘genocide’, according to Milev.

Petar Baichev, one of Bulgaria’s major grain producers from the Sliven region, said that 147 million leva had been promised to the grain producers in the summer of 2007 when they launched a protest. Bulgaria was the only EU country where the state did not provide co-funding to EU funding for agriculture, he said.

On November 2007, nearly 2000 grain producers from the region of Pleven protested. They were ready to start a strike on November 28, if the Parliament would not meet their demands, investor.bg said. Sliven and Dobrich farmers were getting ready for protests, Focus news agency said.

Baichev said that he would meet with the strike committee, founded in the summer of 2007 to discuss where and how protests would be held. The committee was planning protests with agricultural machines on November 28, 29 and 30.

If the demands were not met, agricultural protests would be held in Sofia, he said.

Tatyana Djendova, representative of the Dobroudja Union Of Grain Producers, said that Dobrich grain producers would gather agricultural machines on the international road to Romania on November 29 and 30, but did not intend on blocking the road.