Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry

 Agrostatistics Department

55, Hristo Botev Blvd

Sofia 1040

Bulgaria

See sub-concepts below.

The data set comprises the annual sales of active substances contained in plant protection products placed on the national market for one calendar year according to the Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009 as amended by Commission Regulation (EU) 2017/269 of 16 February 2017 as regards the list of active substances.

Plant Protection Act

Ordinance № 3 of 31 July 2017 on the terms and conditions for production, placing on the market, trade, repackaging, transportation and storage of plant protection products

Plant Protection Act: https://www.lex.bg/laws/ldoc/2136270173

Ordinance № 3 of 31 July 2017 on the terms and conditions for production, placing on the market, trade, repackaging, transportation and storage of plant protection products: https://www.bfsa.bg/userfiles/files/naredbi/%20%E2%84%96%203_2017.pdf

Bulgarian Food Safety Agency

Plant Protection Act: 2014

Ordinance № 3 of 31 July 2017 on the terms and conditions for production, placing on the market, trade, repackaging, transportation and storage of plant protection products: 2017

All variables required under EU regulation are covered by national legislation.

No divergence between national and EU regulation definitions.

The data are expressed in kilograms of active substances.

The classification of the active substances in plant protection products is annexed (Annex III) to Commission Regulation (EU) 2017/269 of 16 February 2017 amending Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning statistics on pesticides.

The active substances are classified according to chemical and functional similarity. Aggregation levels in descending order comprise: major groups, categories of products, chemical classes and active substances.

Administrative data classified in accordance with Regulation (EC) No.1272/2008 (CLP Regulation)

The statistics cover the wholesale and retail trade sector operating in placing plant protection products on the market.

All authorisation holders of plant protection products report the quantity of all active substances that are placed on the market nationally (incl. import and export data).

This data collection comprises pesticide sales data based on the term 'placing on the market' as defined in Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 October 2009 concerning the placing of plant protection products on the market. The scope of the Regulation covers plant protection products and their active substances as can be seen from the key terms of the act immediately below:

Plant protection products: products consisting of or containing active substances, safeners or synergists, and intended for one of the following uses:

• protecting plants or plant products against all harmful organisms or preventing the action of such organisms, unless the main purpose of these products is considered to be for reasons of hygiene rather than for the protection of plants or plant products;
• influencing the life processes of plants, such as substances influencing their growth, other than as a nutrient;
• preserving plant products, in so far as such substances or products are not subject to special Community provisions on preservatives;
• destroying undesired plants or parts of plants, except algae unless the products are applied on soil or water to protect plants;
• checking or preventing undesired growth of plants, except algae.

Active substances: substances or micro-organisms, including viruses, having general or specific action against harmful organisms or on plants, parts of plants or plant products.

Quantity: implies kilograms of the active substances sold.

Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council establishes a common framework for the systematic production of Community statistics on the placing on the market and agricultural use of those pesticides which are plant protection products as defined in Article 2 (a)(i). The statistics shall apply to the annual amounts of pesticides active substances placed on the market in accordance with Annex I and the quantity of active substances shall be aggregated according to the list in Annex III (as amended).

Enterprise placing plant protection products on the market; authorisation holder or holder of parallel trade permits.

All enterprises placing plant protection products on the market; authorisation holders and holders of parallel trade permits.

See sub-concepts below.

The entire territory of the country.

Not applicable

Sales from 2011 onwards.

Not applicable for pesticide sales statistics, because it is not based on an index number of time series.

See sub-concepts below.

Not applicable

Administrative data according to the Law for Plant Protection

Source of data: Bulgarian Agency for Food Safety

The entities allowed to distribute Plant Protection Products (PPP) on the market get licenced and announce the active substance quantities on annual basis.

Annually.

Administrative data according to the Law for Plant Protection. The entities allowed to distribute Plant Protection Products (PPP) on the market get licenced and announce the active substance quantities on annual basis. Data is extracted from the yearly declarations. Letters to importers/producers are sent on an annual basis with the request to deliver data on the quantities of pesticides on the market in the current year. The suppliers have deadline to reply until the end of the current year. In case of non-responses (from the producers of plant protection products), there are penalties (see articles 49 (1)(2) and 154 (1)(2) from the Plant Protection Act, and Article 3 (1) from the Ordinance N° 3 of 31 July 2017 on the terms and conditions for production, placing on the market, trade, repackaging, transportation and storage of plant protection products).

The data for the current year is compared with data from previous years. In case of apparent, obvious deviations a confirmation is requested from the authorizing agency in order to validate the received data.

Data is extracted from the yearly declarations. 

The active substances quantities are collected on annual basis.

The chemical classes, categories of products and major groups quantities are calculated accordingly.

Not applicable for pesticide sales statistics, because the data collection is not based on time series.

All primary pesticide sales data is accurate and reliable, since there were no computations or estimates of the values. As a consequence, the aggregated pesticide sales data is also considered accurate and reliable.

All primary pesticide sales data is accurate and reliable, since there were no computations or estimates of the values. As a consequence, the aggregated pesticide sales data is also considered accurate and reliable.

The data is confidential.

There is no user satisfaction survey. 

There is a full coverage the available active substances on the Bulgarian official market.

There is a 100% coverage the active substances available on the Bulgarian official market.

All primary pesticide sales data is accurate and reliable, since there were no computations or estimates of the values. 

All underlying primary data on pesticide sales are derived from administrative sources for which reporting is obligatory under law.

See point 6.

Not applicable

Not applicable

Not applicable

Not applicable

Not applicable

Not applicable

Not applicable

Not applicable

Not applicable

Not applicable

Not applicable

Not applicable

Not applicable

Not applicable

No general revision policy in Bulgaria available. Corrections are made if requested by Eurostat.

Not applicable

Not applicable

According to the Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009, the data is published by Eurostat 15 months after the end of the reference year and the national quality report 20 months after the end of the reference year.

Not applicable for pesticide sales statistics as the data and national quality reports are only published once in a final result.

15 months after the end of the reference period for the data;

20 months after the end of the reference period for the national quality report.

According to the Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009, data must be transmitted until 30 December of the year t+1, and national quality reports until 31 March of the year t+2.

Administrative data delivered accurately on the deadline.

Not applicable

Data are collected on a country level (NUTS 0). They are not comparable on a regional level. The geographical comparability between countries is evaluated by Eurostat.

Not applicable, because there are no mirror flows in pesticide sales statistics.

Active substances for data before 2016 have not yet been reclassified for Bulgaria - there is break in time series in 2016. Therefore the pesticide sales statistics for Bulgaria is comparable:

• from 2011 to 2015; and from 2016 onwards.

4

In general there may be a slight possibility to compare the data across domains with data from other sources or statistical datasets such as the survey on pesticide use, however, thus far the practical comparison did not yield evidence of coincidence. This is as a result of the survey on agricultural use excluding:

1. Different crops not falling within the scope of observation for the survey

2. The quantities and pesticides products applied in domains such as forest, railroad transport, public parks and gardens and other public sites.

Not applicable for pesticide sales statistics, because the data collection is annual.

Not applicable, because it is not related to national accounts.

The data set is internally coherent.

There is no other dataset available.

No news release.

Data are disseminated on the website of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry

Agricultural report

https://www.mzh.government.bg/en/policies-and-programs/reports/agricultural-report/

No online database

Not applicable

There are rules for releasing confidential data for the purpose of research and the provision of confidential data is performed according to these rules. According to Art.26a of the Statistics Act (https://www.nsi.bg/bg/content/553/basic-page/%D0%B7%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BD-%D0%B7%D0%B0-%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B0) individual data may be provided for the purpose of research to universities or legal persons whose main activity is research after permission by the President of the National Statistical Institute. Individual data is not published according to the Statistics Act Distributed only aggregated data, not published when there is less than 3 holdings forming the value of the indicator or data of one of the monitored units formed over 85% of the published index. There are rules for releasing confidential data for the purpose of research and the provision of confidential data is performed according to these rules. According to Art.26a of the Statistics Act individual and anonymous data may be provided for the purpose of research to universities or legal persons whose main activity is research after permission by the President of the National Statistical Institute. 

RULES FOR PROVISION OF ANONYMOUS INDIVIDUAL DATA FOR SCIENTIFIC AND RESEARCH OBJECTIVES OF THE NATIONAL STATISTICAL INSTITUTE

 Art. 2. The following users may apply for access to anonymized individual data:

1. universities and other higher education institutions;

2. research organizations and institutions;

3. other agencies, organizations or institutions in which there are separate structural units carrying out research activities;

4. other legal entities using data for research and analytical purposes;

5. natural persons who, for the purposes of scientific and research work, need anonymized data.

Art. 3. The User and eServices Department at the Multisectoral statistics and user services Department maintains and updates a list of users that includes the user name, type of data provided, and date of submission.

Art. 4. The data shall be provided on a technical medium in csv, sav, xls or any other format specified in the application.

Section IV

PROVISION OF ANONYMOUS INDIVIDUAL DATA

Art. 17. When anonymizing the data, the following requirements are met:

1. anonymised individual data cannot be provided if they disobey the provisions of Art. 25 of 3Ft;

2. the individual records in the database of the requested survey are processed by competent officers by deleting all identifying individual signs from the data (name, address, publicly accessible identification number, etc.), which directly or indirectly identify a particular statistical unit;

3. in the case of records where these rules are not abided by for certain characteristics, the directorates in whose portfolio the data is prepared shall assess whether they should be entirely erased, delete data only in the cells of those characteristics, or take other appropriate solutions to protect individual data.

Art. 18. The following procedures shall be followed when providing data from studies for consecutive periods (years, quarters, etc.):

1. where, in the case of comparative analyzes, it is necessary to provide anonymized data from several consecutive observations, the individual data shall be coded with the same numbers for each unit in the database for the individual periods;

2.under item 1, the information database can be processed with special software products, which prevent the eventual disclosure of the data for the statistical units by means of methods for comparison of the used identification numbers.

Art. 19. In order to assess the risk of revelation of data sets prepared by the user by matching anonymized individual data in combination with external data, they are subject to re-control by the experts in the concerned domain.

Micro-data has not been disseminated.  

No other documents/publications known.

There is no access to published public documentation on methodology.

Annual report (referring to this report and sent each year to the Commission) for the current year by the Bulgarian Food Safety Agency regarding the control measures.

Not requested.

Not requested.

Not available

No further comment.