Bulgarian minister proposes tightening control over petrol stations

Bulgarian Minister of Economy Bojidar Loukarsky proposed here on Friday measures to strengthen the control on fuel quality and measuring instruments on country's petrol stations.

The creation of a single electronic register between the National Revenue Agency (NRA), the Customs Agency, the Bulgarian Institute of Metrology and the State Agency for Metrology and Technical Surveillance (SAMTS) was one of the measures, Loukarsky said at a press conference.

Such a register was needed because currently each of these authorities collected and processed the information in a different way, he said.

The creation of a laboratory for testing and control of the measuring software was another precaution that would prevent the possibility of manipulation of the data submitted electronically to the NRA, Loukarsky said.

"Currently there is no mechanism to control these data," he said.

Loukarsky also proposed a 20-fold increase of the fines in case of inaccurate measurement of fuel quantity. Now, the fine for the first violation was only 500 BGN (some 288 U.S. dollars), he said.

Since the beginning of this year, SAMTS experts registered violations in the fuel quality in 7 percent of the cases, Loukarsky said. They were related to the content of bioethanol, sulfur, and distillation characteristics, he said.

Meanwhile, discrepancies in fuel quantities were found in less than 1 percent of the measuring instruments, he added.