Iskra Mihailova will be appointed head of the State Fund Agriculture (SFA), Agriculture Minister Valeri Tsvetanov told a November 16 2008 round table on the challenges faced by Bulgarian agriculture, held in Sofia.

 

Her appointment is expected to be approved by Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev within a matter of days. Mihailova is currently Deputy Minister of Regional Development appointed from the quota of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF), the junior partner in the ruling tri-partite coalition. Tsvetanov is also from the MRF quota.  

 

Mihailova has a degree in cultural studies from the Saint Petersburg State University (formerly Leningrad University) and has worked as as an education and culture expert. Now she will be in charge of allocating and administering millions of European Union funds for Bulgarian farmers and dairy producers.

 

As Bulgarian-language Dnevnik reports, her husband Stanislav Koparov was dimissed from the post as head of the State Reserve in 2003 after police found 200 000 tons of grain missing and unaccounted from its stores.

 

He was not charged because of lack of evidence. He was charged on another pending case for having signed deals in his capacity of State Reserve head which caused the state losses of more than one million leva, Dnevnik said.

 

Mihailova will replace Alizan Ayahova, who has been acting head of the SFA since October 2008, when Atanas Kunchev filed his resignation after just three-and-a half months on the post. Kunchev has cited personal reasons, including the illness of a family member, as the reason for his resignation.

 

The same as Mihailova, Kunchev was appointed as head of the fund from the quota of the MRF. His two predecessors, Assen Droumev and Dimitar Tadarukov, have been investigated by prosecutors on charges of misappropriating 22 million leva of funds from the EU's pre-accession aid programme Sapard.

 

SFA is the Government agency in charge of allocating money to projects, but funding was put on hold by the European Commission after numerous irregularities were found in the implementation of the programme.

 

On October 14 2008, it was announced that the SFA had resumed payments for projects under Sapard's pre-accession aid programme. However, 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.

 

By hiking grain purchasing prices, the NDRC hopes to motivate farmers to increase agricultural production, and the agency also pledged to further increase subsidies for agricultural production materials, such as machinery and crop seeds, Xinhua reported earlier.

 

Zhang also called the country's first medium- and long-term grain security plan, targeting production of at least 500 billion kilograms (1.1 trillion pounds) in 2010 and more than 540 billion kilograms in 2020. Output last year was 501.6 billion kilograms.