Bulgaria’s Consumer Protection Commission (CPC) launched on September 30 the internet portal kolkostruva.bg (from the Bulgarian “how much does it cost?”) which is mean to present daily prices of various food and non-food products by city and retail chain.
The portal, which is solely in Bulgarian, has been launched three months before Bulgaria adopts the euro as its currency, as of January 1 2026.
So far, prices are listed for only two retail chains.
The site has undergone a testing period and will begin publishing data on September 30, the government information service said.
It was provided for in the Euro Adoption Act as a measure against speculative price increases for basic goods before the introduction of the euro.
The goal is for retail chains with a turnover of over 10 million leva per year to submit data on several food products every day by 7am – white, rye, type and Dobrudzha bread, banitsa crusts, fresh and yoghurt from 2 to 3.6 per cent, cow’s cheese and yellow cheese from cow’s milk, cottage cheese, chicken, pork and veal 1kg of different cuts, minced meat mixture, several types of sausages, eggs of different sizes, packaged beans, lentils, rice, pasta, white sugar, salt – 1kg each, various canned foods, a dozen types of fruits and vegetables, biscuits, croissants, chocolate, coffee, tea, mineral water, light beer, white and red wine and rakia.
Non-food items include cigarettes, dishwashing detergent, toilet paper, shampoos, toothpastes, and soaps.
There are also 16 types of medicinal products. Among them are analgesics, antiseptics, preparations for treating throat, colds, stomach disorders and laxatives, among others.
Access to the portal kolkostruva.bg is available to 35 retail chains, including pharmacies, according to the CPC.
To date, however, only two retail chains have submitted data. There is still no pharmacy that has published drug prices. The remaining retail chains will probably include data in the portal by November 8, because after that date sanctions will be imposed.
A number of steps must be followed to reach the information you are looking for.
Users must first select the city. However, the list does not include smaller cities in the country where retail chains are not present.
The next step is to select the relevant retail chain, and then the product category. Each retail chain has presented a list of different items in the relevant category, and when one of them is selected, a graph opens. At first glance, it looks empty, but if you look closely, you will find a small blue dot.
When you click on the dot with the cursor, the corresponding price appears. It is likely that in the future, when prices start to be published every day, these dots will form a line of price movements and users will be able to monitor whether the relevant product is increasing or decreasing in price.
Another goal of the platform is to enable users to search for which merchant is offering the best price for the day for the product they are interested in.
The launch of the platform was delayed by nearly two months, as traders were expecting instructions and a list of goods for which they must publish prices every day and submit this information to the CPC. They are obliged, with the latest changes to the Euro Adoption Act, to publish their prices every day in machine-readable form on their websites.
Retail chains have already warned that pouring out a huge amount of price data on thousands of items every day is unlikely to provide useful information to consumers. They have also complained about some inconsistencies that prevent price reductions from being reflected in common practices such as buying two or more of the same product, end-of-day sales or discounts on items with an approaching expiration date.
Bulgarian Prime Minister Rossen Zhelyazkov said on September 30 that effective sanctions will be imposed on traders who do not comply with the provisions of the Euro Adoption Act from October 8. The adaptation period, during which institutions only issue prescriptions, is coming to an end.
Joint inspections by the CPC and the National Revenue Agency regarding law enforcement are also starting.
Zhelyazkov said that companies that, in the absence of economic prerequisites – and currently there are none – unreasonably raise their prices are subject to sanctions.
He said that, according to the provisions of the law, all identified 256 retailers of food, beverages and medicines with a turnover for the previous year of over 10 million leva are obliged to publish on their pages daily in machine-readable format information about the prices of the goods offered from the composition of the large consumer basket. The aim is for the information to be analyzed through the platform “How much does it cost” (Kolkostruva.bg). We count on their cooperation in the implementation of the law, Zhelyazkov also pointed out.
Monitoring of price levels will be based on criteria – economic prerequisites or justification, and in order to have such, it is necessary to change structural components in the price.
These are, for example, electricity, wages, fuels, social payments and other costs of companies. In the absence of such pricing changes, any dynamics in prices will be treated as unreasonably increasing, he said.
“I believe that the market currently has enough mechanisms and a sufficiently correct attitude towards consumers so that the euro is not attributed to price increases where there are no economic prerequisites for this,” Zhelyazkov said.
For reliable official information on Bulgaria’s transition to the euro, the Association of Banks in Bulgaria has a Q and A, in English.
The official evroto.bg website has an English-language version, while the European Commission made available on July 8 a Q and A on Bulgaria’s changeover to the euro.
