The Bulgarian Agriculture Ministry has spent BGN 50 000 from European Funds in one year for 234 shares on Facebook and 140 on Twitter.

The information that the amount was spent from the EU Program for Rural Development to create a Facebook page and a Twitter account, something that can seemingly be done in minutes by the average teenager, was revealed by the Open Parliament civil project, cited by the site for investigative journalism Bivol.bg.

By Monday, the Facebook page of the Ministry, despite the money effort, had less than 150 likes. The likes were 24 before the news emerged, and one of them was from Agriculture Minister, Miroslav Naydenov. The Twitter account had 3 followers before the publication and now boasts 19.

After the disclosure that one social network "like" had cost an average of BGN 133, the Ministry sent a report to Open Parliament, describing in detail the activities to create the above profile and account.

"From the chart we are sending, one can see that the activity to create the page has started on January 1 2012 while it was officially presented on January 9," the Ministry writes.

The page in question is actually a copy of the official cite of the Program for Rural Development, integrated in Facebook, something experts insist can be done in a couple of hours.

"The fan page of the Minister has been linked to the fan page of the Program for Rural Development in order to have more visibility in the social network," is what one can read under the click with which Naydenov has liked the Program's page.

In addition to the Facebook and Twitter profiles, the Ministry has spent another BGN 50 000 for publications in internet forums." The exact forums and the type of publications remain mystery.

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