Bulgarian food industry – situation and development after 2006

The main goal of this article is to review the development of the food, drink and tobacco industry in Bulgaria after the country accession to the European Union. The paper is structured in three parts. The first part includes an analysis of the food, drink and tobacco industry by key economic indicators like number of enterprises, number of employees, its place in the whole industry and in the manufacture, development of the production and sales, changes in the productivity and in its structure by sectors’ contribution to the production and sales. The second part reveals the significance of the food, drink and tobacco industry in the foreign commerce by such as indicators as share in export, import, turnover, and balance; the role of the other EU countries in the Bulgarian foreign commerce with food, drink and tobacco products. Additionally the place of the sector in the European market is demonstrated through indicators such as: brute value as brute value added by one employee, productivity of labour expenditures, profitability, investments by one employee, and others. The third part is devoted to factors for the industry development – levels of the internal demand and of the purchase power of sectors' products, investments in long-term assets, including FDI, the impact of the increasing prices of agricultural and food products in the international and domestic markets. The effects of the country membership in the EU are discussed in respect to quota regime, unified custom tariffs, and the use of the European subsidises. The methodology includes a review of basic publications on the topic, and processing of main statistical data. The results of the analysis could serve as a basis for the improvements of the country policies in respect to food, drink and tobacco industry interaction with agriculture.