Taking office on July 27 2009, Bulgaria’s new Agriculture and Food Minister Miroslav Naidenov declined to go into full detail about the urgent tasks that his team will face in the next few weeks.

Naidenov said that the sector was one of the top priorities of the new Boiko Borissov Government, which has pinned his hopes on it to jump-start the country’s recessionary economy.

Over the next 100 days, Naidenov will observe members of the administration he inherited to see who supports and who blocks processes at the ministry.

He told civil servants they will not be given the boot provided that they manage to prove their expertise.

The number of deputy ministers that the Agriculture Ministry will have was not clear by the end of July 27.

The only confirmed deputy is Preslav Borissov, who was nominated last week and will be in charge of EU funding absorption. He comes from the grain industry, where he used to help his father with his family business. He has held stakes in three companies, one of which is currently undergoing a liquidation procedure.

Last year Preslav Borissov withdrew from local company Defko, which owns the largest grain facility in northeastern Bulgaria.

Bulgarian National Audit Office data shows that he donated 20 000 leva to Boiko Borissov's election campaign. Preslav Borissov has majored in Agronomics at the University of Forestry in Sofia and has a master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Buckingham.

Tsvetan Dimitrov, who headed the Stock Breeding department of the agriculture ministry in the former government, is tipped as a second deputy minister.

Source: Dnevnik.bg