On June 20, the Ministry of Economy and Energy published on its website a statement about a meeting held that day between the ministry and every commercial bank in the country.

The statement said that the ministry has asked the banks to get involved in the process of approving all projects involving applying for financing from the structural projects of the European Union.

The statement said that the banks had agreed and would state their formal support within a week and a working group would be formed to clear up all the details.

According to the ministry, each bank will be required to evaluate the projects of applicants. Each bank will have the right to follow its own criteria when evaluating the projects. As a result of this evaluation, the bank will lend to the applicant as long as the project receives the approval of the governing body of the EU Structural Funds at the ministry, the statement said.

This, according to the statement, lowers the risk to the banks and will offer applicants preferential conditions from different banks.

The ministry said that it was expected that the agreements with each bank would be signed in the first week of July.

According to Kamelia Velichkova, head of the communications and co-ordination department of DSK Bank, this was not exactly the case.

“Yes there was a meeting with the ministry in which DSK Bank took part, but it was just a provisional meeting, nothing more,” Velichkova told The Sofia Echo.

“All I can say is that we are very much interested in developing this field but when exactly this will happen, it is too early to say. The ministry should first show us what they want from the banks in terms of bank guarantees and other financial requirements such as the parameters of the contracts, develop a common business plan, and so on. I expect a working group to be formed at the beginning of July, but when exactly the bank product will be on the market I cannot say because it is not a quick process.”

Velichkova’s counterpart from First Investment Bank (FiBank), Kamelia Kamenova shared the same position.

“It was just a meeting and many things have to be determined in the future,” Kamenova told The Sofia Echo. “Nothing has been finalised yet between the bank and the ministry and we will have to meet each other again to clear up all the details.”

From the two statements, it seems that the ministry had acted as if there was a clear agreements with the banks while the financial institutions are very cautious about making any predictions on when exactly they will start evaluating the applications.

The ministry’s eagerness to describe the meeting as positive could have to do with the fact that the statement was published two days before Finance Minister Plamen Oresharski and European Regional Policy Commissioner Danuta Huebner signed Bulgaria’s National Strategic Reference Framework for EU Structural Funds and Cohesion Fund from 2007 to 2013.

The framework gives Bulgaria access to 6.8 billion euro in EU funding, complemented by 1.128 billion euro in national co-funding.

On June 22, the Agriculture and Forestry Ministry decided to use the Economy and Energy Ministry’s PR methods.

The Agriculture Ministry said in a statement that Bulgarian farmers could use bank credits by using the expected EU subsidies as deposit before banks.

“This is not news for us,” Kamenova said. “FiBank has been offering such loans for quite some time and what the Agriculture Ministry said is not something new for us,” she said.