Bulgaria has spent nearly a quarter of a billion BGN on border security measures since 2014, official figures show.

Measures including equipment and staff deployment are worth some BGN 75.32 M, Interior Minister Rumyana Bachvarova has said in a written reply to an information request cited by daily newspaper Sega.

Combined with the BGN 170 M spent so far on the fence being built along the border with Turkey, the total figure nears BGN 245 M, but does not include the EUR 160 M (BGN 320 M) package agreed and partly disbursed by the European Commission.

"Maintenance and current expenditures" make up the vast part of the cost of measures (the fence not included), at BGN 58.5 M. Staff expenses amount to BGN 15.5 M.

Despite the amount of funding spent on border security, numbers call into question its efficiency.

Since year began, 4526 migrants have been detained while trying to cross into Bulgaria from Turkey.

Migrants arrested on the territory of Bulgaria after having crossed, however, were 17 977 for the same period.

On Wednesday, Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov told reporters that some EUR 100 in emergency funding from the EU (or nearly two-thirds of the package) have already been transferred to government accounts.