Between 20 and 30% more expensive are fruits and vegetables this year. This established a NOVA check. Should we buy ready-made preserves from the store or prepare our own? At the height of the season for the preparation of pickles, compotes and lutenitsa, housewives predictably make the last selection from the market stalls. For Ruska Avreyska, preparing winter meat at home is a tradition.
“The colorful pickle – the one with carrots, cabbage, cauliflower, lutenica, roasted peppers, shall we say more? It will be more expensive than last year, because more is imported. That’s why some households refuse to close jars. Maybe 30% more expensive. People who are going to make winter clothes expect it to be cheaper, but I didn’t wait. I won’t do it. I’ve done it before, I won’t do it this year. Everything is so expensive that I have no words at all,” says Avreiska.
On the market at the moment, a kilogram of cabbage is BGN 1.50. Peppers and gherkins are BGN 2.50 each. Tomatoes are traded from BGN 1.60 to BGN 4 per kilogram.
“Canned food is the cheapest so far. They charge more for it. It is mostly made in jars. Now it is currently 1.50 BGN, and it used to be 1 BGN, 1.20 BGN,” explains Ivainka Peychinova, a vegetable producer.
Ivanka Peychinova claims that the goods she sells are her own production. He grows vegetables in the village of Kurtovo Konare. This fall, she raised prices, but minimally. “Fertilizers, poisons, seeds are also expensive. For us, we think what we sell is on par,” she added.
Traders complain that there is currently a huge shortage of Bulgarian products on the market. This year production was less. “Cauliflower, cruciferous vegetables are hard to find, red capsicum. Also, cauliflower happened that September in the heat there was a lot of cauliflower. Now, when the search starts, it just got better. There is none,” reports Iliya Dobrev, a merchant.
And from the market to the cannery. Here we are greeted with the statement that the native fruit production has decreased 6 times. For this reason, factories for sweets, marmalades and jams are now forced to import raw materials from abroad.
“In Bulgaria, more than 80% of fruits are imported from abroad. Unfortunately, the situation is almost the same with vegetables, which makes us dependent on external factors. For example, fruits are mainly imported from Greece, vegetables are mainly imported from Turkey, Macedonia fruits and vegetables are also imported from Serbia,” said Stojko Kirovski, chairman of the Union of Fruit and Vegetable Processors in Bulgaria.
However, there will be no jump in the price of cans, the industry promises, even though the price of jars has gone up by 100% and that of caps by 60%.
“The market simply cannot bear it. Otherwise, our costs have not decreased, on the contrary. We have increased wages, the price of raw materials has increased a lot, which means that we can still increase prices, but we shouldn’t,” he added.
