Kostadin Marinov from the Bulgarian Grain Traders Association has argued that the state has tools to curb illegal deals on the market and can deploy them by reverse charging VAT.

In a Wednesday interview for the Bulgarian National Radio (BNR), he commented on the latest spate of inspections along the chain grain producers - wheat and feed grains exporters.

The operation is conducted by the grains watchdog at the Bulgarian Agriculture Ministry in cooperation with the tax authorities, the Economic Police Directorate and the Transport Ministry.

Businessmen speaking on condition of anonymity told news portal investor.bg that the operation was sheer muscle-flexing on the part of the administration lasting over a year, covering legally operating companies only.

Citing unofficial reports, Zlati Zlatev, Director of the National Grains Service, told BNR that around 30% of the deals with these crops belonged to the grey sector.

Kostadin Marinov suggested that a number of grain traders were still evading tax payments, despite the attempts to rein in illegal trade.

The representative of the Bulgarian Grain Traders Association reminded that prior to Bulgaria's accession to the EU, the state had had tools for monitoring the market via the common VAT account covering all of the concluded deals.

He suggested, however, that these regulations had grown outdated and the people participating in the real economy believed that the possibility for reverse charging VAT was an appropriate mechanism through which the tax authorities could stop violations along the chain.

Marinov added that the business sector and the Finance Ministry had engaged in an active dialogue in the past few months in an attempt to come up with an efficient scheme for blocking tax violations.

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