Anna Mudeva

Bulgaria health minister charged with graft

Anna Mudeva — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 11:40:56 +0000

SOFIA, March 30 (Reuters) – Bulgarian prosecutors charged
Health Minister Bozhidar Nanev with graft in connection with flu
vaccine contracts on Tuesday, a new step in the country’s drive
to clean up its image as the most corrupt European Union nation.

Prosecutors said Nanev caused 2.45 million levs ($1.67
million) of damage by signing two contracts last December with
Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding AG for the delivery of
the influenza drug Tamiflu.

Nanev, who was not immediately available to comment, was the
first minister in the Balkan country to be charged with
corruption since communism collapsed 20 years ago. He faces up
to 10 years in jail if found guilty.

“It is important we have proved that there are no
untouchable people,” said prosecutor Nikolai Kokinov.

Prosecutors said Nanev had chosen the vaccine offered by the
Bulgarian arm of Roche rather than the cheaper one on offer from
Britain’s National Health Service, and said they would ask the
Sofia City Court to suspend him.

The health ministry said it would issue a statement later.

Prime Minister Boiko Borisov, whose centre-right GERB party
came to power last July on promises to end a climate of
impunity, has promised to be uncompromising when there are
suspicions of corruption among his officials.

Brussels will assess Bulgaria’s progress in fighting graft
and organised crime in July, and failure to show results may
threaten access to some of the 11 billion euros ($15 billion) in
aid promised to the EU’s poorest member between now and 2013.

In an interim report last week, Brussels said the new
government had the political will to fight graft but criticised
the lack of convictions. [ID:nLDE62M18H]

A number of former ministers and high-ranking officials have
been prosecuted, but Bulgaria has so far convicted only one
former senior official of graft and has jailed just one crime
boss.

Punishing officials within GERB’s ranks found guilty of
fraud is a vital test of the new cabinet’s anti-graft drive, EU
diplomats have said.

Prosecutors have charged three ministers in the previous
Socialist-led government with corrupt practices and arrested
members of powerful crime gangs since the new cabinet came to
power but no trial dates have been set yet.

Borisov has put more pressure on the inefficient and
graft-prone judiciary to wrap up a number of high-profile
trials, which Brussels and the Bulgarian public see as a test of
the government’s ability to rein in corruption.

On Monday, a Sofia court sentenced six Bulgarian businessmen
to jail for laundering 7.5 million euros in EU farm aid in one
of the closely watched trials. [ID:nLDE62S0SJ]
(Editing by Tim Pearce)

Bulgaria repeats no GMO pledge, public unconvinced

Anna Mudeva — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:27:06 +0000

SOFIA, Feb 10 (Reuters) – Bulgaria’s farm minister reassured worried people on Wednesday that the government would not allow genetically modified (GM) food in shops but stopped short of saying whether Sofia would declare the Balkan country GM-free. Miroslav Naidenov told Reuters in an interview a five-year moratorium on cultivation of GM crops drafted by his ruling centre-right GERB party last week should be enough to soothe public fears provoked by new legislation.

But non-government organisations, farmers and citizens, who have rallied against GM crops in the past weeks, said in a statement the proposed moratorium was "a political PR and manipulation" aimed at bypassing public concerns.

They said they would stage a demonstration in front of parliament on Thursday to press deputies not to replace a ban on GM crop cultivation with a licensing regime.

The changes that sparked public fears envisage lifting a ban on growing GM crops for scientific and commercial reasons in the environment but the cultivation of such crops would only be possible with the authorisation of a special committee.

The new government, elected last July, has said the legal changes, approved by parliament at first reading, were aimed at complying with the EU laws and should be adopted along with the moratorium.

"The cultivation of such crops and their use to make food for people, which is now scaring the society, has never been an object of consideration," Naidenov said.

"This (moratorium) is a commitment of the ruling majority for five years, so far we have kept our promises and people must calm down. There are much more serious things (to worry about)."

PRESSURE

Authorising GMOs for consumption, processing or cultivation in Europe is a politically charged subject with many openly hostile to what they call "Frankestein foods."

In Bulgaria, green groups, organic farmers and a number of political parties, including some of GERB’s rightist allies in parliament, say Sofia must not liberalise its GMO legislation and give in to pressure from biotech and other industries.

The government has said it has not received any requests for cultivation of GM crops and denies any corporate pressure.

Critics argue GMOs threaten biodiversity, could contaminate conventional crops, and also pose a health risk.

Naidenov said as a consumer and parent he had "big concerns" about GMO food but added he was ready to listen to arguments of the biotech industry, too.

"For the time being, we…must not raise the issue at all and it is unacceptable to offer GMO food to people and GMO food to the Bulgarian market," he said.

"At the same time I want…to hear the opinion of the other side. We cannot stop science and development. I do not accept calls to also stop experiments in laboratories."

Green groups have called on the government to support organic farming instead. But Naidenov said the government could not afford to set aside money in times of deepening recession for a sector that was unlikely to help raise competitiveness.

"It it is very important not to get carried away by fashion. Every lev must go for conventional farming in times of crisis particularly when we have huge reserves of unused potential." (Editing by James Jukwey)

Bulgaria looks to privatise hospitals after reform

Anna Mudeva — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:21:26 +0000

SOFIA, Feb 4 (Reuters) – The Bulgarian government is likely to begin a privatisation programme of its state hospitals this year, once an overhaul of the indebted and inefficient sector is complete, Health Minister Bozhidar Nanev said on Thursday.

He told Reuters in an interview that investor interest would rise once the Balkan country had put in place a better funding structure for hospitals, with extra money likely to come from people paying more into both public and private health funds.

Moves by the centre-right government, elected last July, to close down 21 state-run communist-era hospitals and to raise contribution levels have triggered protests in towns across the Balkan country.

Crowds including doctors and nurses have demonstrated, saying while reforms were badly needed they feared thousands of people living in remoter areas could be left without access to hospital treatment. [ID:nLDE6100UU]

Another 130 hospitals will also be shut or converted to smaller centres, as part of the government’s plan, which Nanev said would be carried out, despite public opposition.

"Privatisation is the way to go," Nanev, 47, a former surgeon said. "There must be privatisation of both hospitals and the services provided by hospitals".

Most of Bulgaria’s 350 hospitals are state-owned, of which 71 were on a list of assets banned for privatisation. Nanev said this could be changed through legal amendments once the government had a clear strategy on sell-offs.

He said the reforms needed to show results so as to showcase the investment potential to investors.

Years of post-communist neglect and lack of political will for reforms have left many hospitals understaffed, heavily indebted, lacking contemporary equipment and even medicines.

Corruption in the sector is widespread and paying bribes to doctors for services due to be covered by insurances is the norm. Opinion polls show Bulgarians are the most dissatisfied with their healthcare system in of the 27-member European Union.

To secure money for the planned reforms, Sofia is considering obliging Bulgarians to pay extra private health insurance and to raise by 2 percentage points to 10 percent of gross income, payments to state health funds as of 2011. An existing voluntary scheme to contribute to private funds has failed to work.

The ministry was also working on a new methods of calculating prices of medical services to reflect the market reality, he said.

"Reforms needs money. We cannot make reforms by saving money, this must be clear," Nanev said but did not give figures.

The budget of the state health fund for hospitals fell 24 percent to 709 million levs ($503.2 million) in 2010, data showed. Hospitals’ debt stood at some 350 million levs by end-November last year.

The poorest EU country cut total health spending this year by 350 million levs to 2.25 billion, or some 4.2 percent of GDP, nearly halve the proportion spent in many Western nations. (Editing by Matthew Jones)

Doctors rally over hospitals closure in Bulgaria

Anna Mudeva — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:13:19 +0000

SOFIA, Feb 1 (Reuters) – Doctors, nurses and citizens in Bulgaria rallied and blocked a road on Monday to protest against a planned closure of hospitals and cuts in state subsidies as part of a healthcare reform.

The new centre-right government, elected last July, will shut 21 communist-era state hospitals this month due to a lack of specialists, equipment and money. Another 130 hospitals would also be closed down or converted to smaller medical centres.

The government, pressured by falling budget revenues in times of deepening recession, says the Balkan country needed less but more modern hospitals with high quality services.

Doctors, nurses and people in the affected regions disagree, saying the reform would leave thousands in remote place without access to hospital treatment as many could not afford to travel to the cities.

Some 400 hospital staff and people in Gotse Delchev temporarily blocked a roundabout in the southwestern town, while doctors and nurses staged a walkout in the northern town of Novi Pazar. Hundreds of people joined their protest.

"The reform is implemented without a clear strategy of the consequences, without funding and public debate and support," said Maria Radoikova, head of the Gotse Delchev hospital.

"Our budget has been slashed by 60 percent. It makes it impossible to function normally, we cannot pay wages, buy medicines and treat patients."

More rallies across the country of 7.6 million are planned this week and people threaten to block highways.

Bulgaria, the poorest European Union nation, has reduced spending on healthcare by 500 million levs to 2.6 billion levs or about 4.2 percent of GDP this year, almost half the amount of money spent in richer West European countries.

The health ministry says it will equip primary care departments in the hospitals due to be closed this month.

Sofia has also tightened coverage rules and as a result 380,000 people lost their healthcare rights over failing to pay three monthly insurance instalments for the past three years.

The budget of the government’s National Health Insurance Fund is under strain by rising drug and hospital costs and ageing population.

The country also suffers a shortage of doctors and nurses as many left in the past 20 years lured by higher pay abroad.

The government has also pledged to push ahead with overdue overhaul of education and the pension system. Rising unemployment and painful reforms are likely to erode its strong popularity ratings, pollsters say. (Reporting by Anna Mudeva and Irina Ivanova; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

CME in talks to buy News Corp Bulgarian bTV: source

Anna Mudeva — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 18:20:17 +0000

SOFIA (Reuters) – Television group Central European Media Enterprises (CME) is close to signing a deal to buy News Corp’s Bulgarian broadcaster bTV for about 500 million euros ($704.5 million), a source familiar with the matter said.

The Sofia-based source, who is close to the talks, told Reuters on Tuesday the deal for the whole of bTV was likely to be announced in the weeks after February 1.

“The deal is about to be finalized,” the source told Reuters. “We’re talking around 500 million.”

The price is much less than 500 million euros that, according to Bulgarian media reports in September 2009, News Corp had sought from CME for only 55 percent of the station.

Advertising spending has fallen sharply in the global downturn.

A spokeswoman for bTV, Bulgaria’s most watched station, with a market share of over 38 percent in December, declined to comment, but confirmed the company was in talks with potential suitors.

“We have no information at this stage and I cannot comment,” bTV’s communications director Petya Terzieva said. “bTV has been talking to a number of companies and many show interest.”

CME has TV stations in several central and eastern European markets, but has agreed to sell its Ukraine assets for $300 million earlier this month as part of a divestment program.

Its biggest station is Nova in the Czech Republic, where the company also has a secondary listing in addition to the Nasdaq.

Romana Tomasova, vice president of corporate communications at CME, also declined to comment on a bTV deal.

Tomasova added that CME was looking at various options in Bulgaria after acquiring an 80 percent stake in two Bulgarian television stations for $172 million in July 2008.

“In Bulgaria we are evaluating several options,” she told Reuters. “They may involve kinds of joint venture, merger, acquisition or just keep developing the stations as they are.”

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in London declined comment.

News Corp has long sought to divest non-core assets and has said that in Europe and Asia it would focus on India, pay TV in western Europe, and rebuilding its newspaper business.

In eastern Europe, it still owns television assets in Latvia, and radio and outdoor advertising in Russia. News Corp agreed to sell its 49 percent stake in Serbian TV operator Fox Televizija to Greek media group Antenna last month.

Analyst Patrick Vyroubal of Czech brokerage said CME should focus on paying down its debt, but noted it was positive that, unlike the Ukrainian business, bTV was profit-making.

“It would be better for CME to repay a part of debt than to finance new acquisitions,” he said. “On the other hand, a new acquisition could create some value in the long-term, therefore if the price is justifiable, then in future it could be a good deal.”

CME shares dropped 1.3 percent on Nasdaq after the news to $31.02. The news came after the close of the Prague Stock Exchange.

If it goes through, the bTV deal would be the third major deal in the Bulgarian media market in the past two years, after CME bought cable networks TV2 and Ring TV and Swedish Modern Times Group bought Nova TV for 620 million euros.

(Reporting by Anna Mudeva; Jason Hovet in Prague and Georgina Prodhan in London, editing by Will Waterman and Rupert Winchester)

Festive fare for hard times? Bottle it

Anna Mudeva — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 00:08:13 +0000

ORESHAK, Bulgaria (Reuters) – In a dimly lit cellar festooned with cobwebs, Sando and Lilyana keep enough home-made food provisions to survive whatever may befall their mountain village, be it recession or cold.

Regardless of living standards and social status, there is hardly a Bulgarian family which does not store at least a jar of home-made pickles, personal favorites with late communist dictator Todor Zhivkov and present Prime Minister Boiko Borisov.

The 7.6 million people of the Balkan country, where food bills consume 40 percent of wages, produced some 208 million jars of various provisions or an average of 100 jars per household in 2008, data by independent pollster Mediana shows.

“Nothing compares to home-made food,” said Lilyana Trencheva, 60, opening a bottle of tomato juice and a jar of gherkins for reporters to sample.

“We only buy cheese, oil, sugar, bread and Coca Cola from the shop,” said her husband Sando, 60, cracking open a dusty bottle of home-made plum rakia brandy.

Winter provisioning — known in Bulgarian as “zimnina,” derived from the word for winter “zima” — is a centuries-old tradition entwining necessity, family bonding and a national passion that reigns over culinary tastes.

The practice helped people in eastern Europe survive decades of communist austerity, years of post-communist economic crises and hyperinflation in the 1990s.

For many Bulgarians, whose average monthly wages of 300 euros ($430) and pensions of 80 euros are the lowest in the European Union, it remains a lifeline particularly as recession puts an end to 12 years of growth.

“When you slaughter two pigs, stuff a barrel with pickled cabbage, make compotes, rakia and wine, you do survive,” said Georgi Georgiev, 52, who sells vegetables at Sofia’s biggest street market.

ECONOMY OF THE JAR

Winter provisioning had its peak under communism, when food shortages and shopping queues were common. Bulgarians invented a special electric pepper roaster, widely used on city balconies as families teamed up to stew huge quantities of a popular pepper-tomato spread, called “lyutenitsa,” on open fires.

“Preparing provisions for the winter was of key importance for the socialist economy,” said Nikolai Vukov of the Institute of Folklore at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

“There was no such luxury as eating fruit (during the winter) unless it was preserved.”

The industrial manufacturing of canned food flourished.

Exports of preserved foods helped Bulgaria feed the Warsaw Pact armies and it sold 800,000 tonnes annually to the Soviet bloc, Germany and England. Several generations of Russians grew up on Bulgarian canned stewed vegetables.

Nowadays, exports are only 100,000 tonnes a year and are destined mainly to Germany, Australia and the United States to meet demand from large Bulgarian and Russian immigrant communities.

Production of zimnina at home, particularly in cities, has declined in the past decade as living standards rose.

HOME-MADE RULES

The share of home-made jams, roasted peppers and eggplants, pickles and others in the total consumption of food fell to some 15 percent last year from 39 percent in 1998.

But even those who do not make zimnina themselves buy provisions labeled home-made in shops, or get them from rural relatives. People are used to recipes without preservatives.

“It is no longer just a question of budget and money — people want to eat what they used to eat,” said Asen Chaushev, a top chef during communism, who now teaches at Bulgaria’s most prestigious restaurateur college.

In Oreshak, tucked away in the Balkan Mountain Range in central Bulgaria, pensioners Sando and Lilyana say industrial products cannot begin to match home-made food’s quality.

“It is delicious … and we like to be well-stocked because you never know what the weather will be like next year,” said Lilyana. She and Sando have laid dozens of kilos of salted bacon and sauerkraut in kegs to be ready in time for Christmas.

Many of the jars are destined to go abroad to family members who say that nothing else tastes like home.

“My daughter takes Bulgarian seeds to Spain to grow her own tomatoes and peppers,” said Anka Kaneva, 62, from Oreshak. “She does not like the Spanish ones.”

Zimnina for many is about homesickness and nostalgia.

“It might sound funny but 47 years ago I brought lyutenitsa with me when I left for Paris. Now I still keep taking parcels of roasted peppers and lyutenitsa,” said renowned Bulgarian artist Nikola Manev who lives in France.

“They have it there too and it’s less expensive … But when I open the jar, it smells of childhood and Bulgaria. There is nothing more precious than this. You cannot buy it with money.”

TAX CHANGE

Bulgarians’ love for food and drink prepared at home is so strong it even dictates state policy.

Last month and back in the 1980s, respective governments dropped plans to raise alcohol taxes after public anger that this would threaten the centuries-old ritual of making wine and rakia, a traditional grape or other fruit brandy, at home.

To thank new Prime Minister Boiko Borisov, whose center-right cabinet took over in July, for stopping parliament from raising taxes on alcohol, villagers named their rakia “Borisovka,” playing on his name.

“No matter what the system is called, capitalism, socialism or slavery, it will not change people’s tastes,” said Iliya Kafedzhiev, head of Bulgaria’s Canning Research Institute.

(Editing by Sara Ledwith)