site.btaInitiative Committee Demands that Agriculture Ministry Presents Agrifood Chain Bill for Public Discussion

An initiative committee to boycott commercial retail chains requested here on Friday that the agrifood chain bill presented by the Agriculture Ministry in March be presented for public debate, then tabled and passed in Parliament. The committee said that if this does not take place, they will consider further action.

A week after Easter and a month after the end of the supermarket boycott and the Agriculture Minister's promise to draft and adopt the law on the agrifood chain, as well as his promise that this law will reduce the prices of basic food products by 20%, prices continue to rise, said former ombudsman Maya Manolova. She also commented that the Minister's Easter Basket campaign has been a disaster, after retail chains and major food retailers in the country boycotted it. Prices of the products included in it – lamb, kozunak (sweet bread), confectionery – have risen.

According to Manolova, the agrifood chain bill continues to languish in the Ministry of Agriculture, and so does the promise of a 20% price cut on staple food items. She suggested that the government might be serving the big economic players rather than the public. She warned: "And in the context of the government's intentions to act for our country's accession to the euro area without any legislation to limit the prices of basic food products, imagine what this will lead to."

Velizar Enchev, former ambassador of Bulgaria to Croatia and member of the initiative committee, also noted the need to present for public discussion and adoption the draft agrifood chain legislation and expressed concern that there is no talk of implementing a cap on the markups of basic food products.