Competitive Profile of Food Producers in Bulgaria

Agri-food sector is one of the traditionally well-developed sectors in Bulgaria. Even more, Bulgaria has been a net food exporter since 2007. The export picture of Bulgarian food industry has been changed after the full EU membership of the country in 2007. Thus, the food import exceeds the food export more than twice nowadays. This state is the first pillar of the lost competitiveness of the agri-food sector in Bulgaria. The basic aim of the paper is to reveal why Bulgarian food producers have lost their competitive advantages so fast. So, the basic research question is the following: what kind of factors drives the food producers to worsen their production in comparison with other food-market players? Our expectations could be verified in two different layers: the sector’s one as well as enterprise’s one. At the sector level, it is interesting to find out how the market competition has changing. On the other hand, we have enterprise level, where the single food producer has been changing. According to the above, the paper has the following structure: the first and the second parts are introduction where we show some figures about the lost competitiveness of the food production in Bulgaria in the last few years. In the third part – methodology – we set our research thesis and give explanation how the analysis goes through. The fourth part is data analysis – where we analyse the changes of the competitive driven-factors as at the sectorial level (such as: agrarian development; food clusters development; institutional support etc.) as well as at the enterprise level (such as: input labour, input materials; distribution channels etc.). Finally, in conclusion we give our recommendations with priority to the enterprises what to do for their competitiveness increase.