Agriculture State Fund Director Sees Improved Internal Controls

The executive director of the Agriculture State Fund (ASF), Atanas Kunchev, says in a radio interview Monday that internal controls at the Fund have improved and SAPARD has been the most successful pre-accession instrument in Bulgaria, BTA reports.

Having taken the top position at ASF about a month ago, Kunchev said in his National Radio interview that irregularities in the absorption of SAPARD funding made public last Friday, have been identified due to measures in an action plan on SAPARD.

Following the suspension of payments to Bulgaria under three SAPARD measures over various deficiencies in handling the funding, Bulgaria prepared an action plan and submitted it to Brussels in late July. In the latest development last week, ASF made public eight cases of SAPARD-related irregularities and fraud and said 3 million leva paid for faulty projects have already been refunded.

Kunchev said work under SAPARD now is in full swing and the Agriculture Fund is taking requests for funding.

He said his message to Bulgarian farmers is that ASF is operational and its accreditation to deal with SAPARD projects has not been revoked. He mentioned Romania whose SAPARD agency has lost its accreditation.

Also, a deadline for the submission of disbursement requests by municipalities expires on August 31 and municipalities which have completed their projects and made the applicable expenses, will be able to get their money, Kunchev said.

He said that a total of 506 projects have been canceled or nullified for the whole period during which SAPARD has been applicable in Bulgaria. He sees this as an indication of the efficient controls set in place by the SAPARD agency since its establishment.

Kunchev said that everybody working at ASF believe SAPARD to be the most successful of the pre-accession programs applicable in Bulgaria. His view is that having several fraudulent SAPARD beneficiaries is not a reason to brand as a failure a program which has seen 3,500 projects approved in the course of eight years.

He expects that some 200 approved projects under the new measures of the Operational Program Rural Development - which he said rests on the good practices established by SAPARD - will be announced by August 15.