Bulgaria’s online milk quota exchange will start in August 2011, which will mark the beginning of the next quota period, Angel Kenanov, deputy executive director of State Fund Agriculture, said on Tuesday.

In the past few months, the SFA worked on a joint project with the Lithuanian payments agency for introduction of electronic trade. The Vilnius-based institution was the EU’s first to adopt the online trading system.

Under the existing mechanism, farmers who want to buy or sell milk quotas should file a request with SFA. Once the new system has been put in place, they will be able to do this online.

Meanwhile, the Lithuanian agency has recommended that Bulgaria should introduce advance payment for the milk quotas as at the moment a lot of farmers say they would buy certain quantities but do not do it.

Cow’s milk production quotas have been introduced in the European Union to curb the overproduction that took place within the community in previous years. Each member country receives two quotas per year -- for delivery to processors and for direct sales to end consumers. This, in turn, is divvied up between separate farms and if a farm fails to fulfill its quotas, it can sell it on to another farm.