Outdated Technology Ruins Bulgarian Agriculturemachinery stumble a modern and efficient agriculture in Bulgaria. And although in recent years the machinery has been constantly upgraded, for its full modernization, at this pace, around 30 years will be needed, said the chairman of the Bulgarian Association of Agrotechnology Veselin Genev last week.
However, in recent years the market for new agricultural equipment is stable and each year it has been increasing by 4-5 percent. Significantly, since the beginning of the year until the end of July, 877 new tractors have been bought (more than in the same period last year). People in the industry expect that in the remaining four months of the year the new machines can reach up to about 1400. The same number was bought in 2012.
According to rough calculations, from the machines sold so far companies have generated a toral turnover of 1 billion euros, Veselin Genev said. The new machines are sold mainly in Dobrich region, in the regions of Pleven, Ruse, Stara Zagora, Burgas, Varna and Silistra. Yet, these amounts will increase, because most of the machines that are now used in agriculture are too old. According to the workers in the industry in 2009, 80% of harvesters and 82% of the tractors in the country were more than 10 years old. Three years later, farmers continue to work with the old machines – upgraded are only 2% of the harvesters. Far better it seems is the fleet of tractors – those over ten years old are less than 10% of all.
Outdated are even some of the machines bought with money from the programme for rural development in 2007-2008. Some of them have already reached the limit of their capacity of 15-20 thousand workhours. In practice, to repair them will come much more expensive for their owners than to buy new equipment.
This is not so surprising given the fact that the budget for the replacement of agricultural machinery of the programme was exhausted in the first two years after its start. According to the managers of the businesses, the rapid depletion of resources is the result of poor planning. Curiously, with EU funds are purchased not more than 10% of the now working tractors and about 2-3% of the harvesters in the country.
However, next year the sector is not expected to obtain EU funds for new machines. Money for replacement equipment will be expected as early as the beginning of 2015 but may be delayed because of the rural training programme. Another reason is the long delay in processing the applications and documents, which will further aggravate the receipt of new money. We are yet working and discussing the framework and measures in the new programme, and the document can be sent to Brussels as early as September or October, the Association warned. Accordingly, the first projects in the new programme for rural areas will be adopted in the last quarter of next year, the earliest. A real cash from the subsidies will start flowing at the beginning of 2015.
The BANKER
