SOFIA (Bulgaria), September 14 (SeeNews) – Bulgaria said on Monday it has awarded a 3.997 million lev ($2.97 million/2.04 million euro) contract to German-based European Space Imaging to provide satellite imagery for a digital orthophoto map of the country’s territory.
The deal with the German company averts the possibility that Bulgaria may lose some 700 million levs under the European Union’s single payment scheme (SPC), the agricultural ministry said in a statement.
Bulgarian Agriculture Minister Miroslav Naydenov warned in August that EU aid allocated for payments to Bulgarian farmers per eligible hectare of agricultural land may be cancelled due to outdated cadastral mapping data.
Under the SPC, EU agricultural aid is no longer linked to production with payment entitlements calculated on the basis of the payments received by the farmer during a reference period (historical model) or the number of eligible hectares farmed during the first year of implementation of the scheme (regional model).
The German company is the only candidate that offered high quality for the technological execution of the photographic process, the statement said.
Greece’s Aratos Technologies, Bulgaria’s Geocad 93 and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences were the other candidates that had filed bids in the tender, the ministry said.
Some 40% of the country’s territory is expected to be mapped by November 30, Naydenov said in the statement.
(1 euro=1.95583 Bulgarian levs)