COMPETITIVE CHANGES OF FOOD PRODUCTION IN BULGARIA

Agri-food sector is one of the traditionally well-developed sectors in Bulgaria. 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. The aim of the paper is to reveal why Bulgarian food producers have lost their competitive advantages so fast, what kind of factors drives the food producers to worsen their production in comparison with other food-market players? The analyse showed that the food producers do not use efficiently inter-business competitive factors (technology development and transfer as well as package design and service development). On the sectorial level, the food producers focus on to the resource management and they miss to enlarge their competitiveness by cooperation with suppliers, consumers or other food processors.