The Bulgarian State Fund Agriculture has published a report on Wednesday, assessing the history and progress of the European Union’s SAPARD program in the country.

The balance sheet for the "Special Accession Program for Agricultural and Rural Development"program shows that more than BGN 500 M remained unabsorbed when the final payment was issued on December 10.

The EU program was launched in Bulgaria in 2001 and, with a one-year extension, expires at the end of 2009. State Fund Agriculture (SFA) is the EU Paying Agency set up to implement all EU measures in the agricultural sectors.

Within the period of implementation of the program, a total of 2 600 projects with grants of BGN 876,7 M were paid for, with the total contractual financial resource on the program being BGN 1,3 B.

26 projects with grants of BGN 28,5 M remain unpaid through SAPARD, as they did not meet the program’s requirements before the date of its closure. These programs are the subject of investigation by prosecutors.

Over the period of its execution, SAPARD was hit by numerous scandals, and blocked several times for internal political reasons. Early in 2008, the European Commission stopped the funding on three measures due to major fraud non-appropriation allocations identified by the European Anti-Fraud Office OLAF.

The program was unblocked at the beginning of September 2009, and since then 197 projects have been paid with subsidies of BGN 83,7 M. All projects that met the eleigibity criteria had been funded, the SFA report noted.

Registered irregularities and fraud under SAPARD during the life of the project amounted to 419, of which 288 had financial consequences. In 131 cases there were no such consequences, since deficiencies had been identified before any payment of subsidies.

Annulled funds for the seven years amounted to BGN 374 M. This amount remains unabsorbed by Bulgaria, and has been lost by the ending of the EU program.