Bulgarian grain producers are descending on Sofia with tractors and other farming equipment, and will set up blockades, insisting on a meeting with Prime Minister Boiko Borissov, the Focus news agency reported on March 21 2011.

The deputy chairman of the national association of grain producers, Vassil Petrov, said that they will respond to a potential meeting at the Council of Ministers, but only if they are assured personal talks with Borissov.

It was reported earlier that protesters would be met at the Council of Ministers by Finance Minister Simeon Dyankov and Minister of Agriculture Miroslav Naidenov. The protesters, however, said that they were pessimistic that such a meeting would be productive, that the ministers could not be trusted and that they had held too many futile meetings with them in the past.

“We don’t believe them (Naidenov and Dyankov),” Petrov said.

“We demand to be given a meeting with the Prime Minister. If something is going to happen, it will happen then,” Petrov added.

Hundreds of grain producers are expected to participate in the event, which was announced last week. Disenchanted people from the sector will congregate from Razgrad, Vidin, Shoumen, Veliko Turnovo, Rousse, Plovdiv, Yambol, Sliven and Bourgas, the report said.

In total, grain producers will be protesting in more than 20 areas across the country, the private television channel bTV reported. They accuse the Ministry of Agriculture of failing to fulfill its pledges to their sector, commitments which it made on June 8 2009 in a memorandum between grain producers and the Government.

As of March 15 2011, according to the protesters, only 10 per cent of promised subsidies have been paid out.

Their view, however, is challenged by the Government.

“More than 80 per cent of the subsidies have been paid already,” the Minister of Agriculture told bTV in a morning interview.

“Yesterday (March 20) we held an emergency meeting with the Prime Minister, in the presence of Finance Minister Dyankov and the head of the Agriculture Committee, in which we discussed the farmers’ demands,” he said.

According to Naidenov, in 2010, the state had to provide one billion and 18 million leva to the sector, of which farmers were paid 87 million.

“What remains now is for the 931 million leva to be paid to grain producers, and those payments commenced on March 15. In total, about 91 000 grain producers are due to receive their money and we have already wired over 80 per cent from the sum, unlike what they claim – that its only 10 per cent,” Naidenov said.