Restaurant owners are ready to protest if the deputies vote to return the 20 percent VAT rate for food products and non-alcoholic beverages. The Deputy Chairman of the Bulgarian Hotel and Restaurant Association Enyo Enev warned about this, quoted by BNT. He specified that the industry organizations rely on a fruitful dialogue with the responsible institutions in order to avoid tension.
Yuliyan Aleksiev has been a restaurant owner for more than 20 years. He calculates that if the deputies decide to return the 20 percent VAT for the industry, he will have to make difficult decisions:
"At some point, when the bills start to not come in, even though it is a business with years, with traditions, with a lot of money and heart and love invested in it. I will be forced to either cut a lot of expenses, staff, working hours…"
This is the perspective facing most restaurateurs.
Enyo Enev - Deputy Chairman of the Bulgarian Restaurant Association: "The price of everything that is prepared in restaurants will also rise. Some of the colleagues will go into the gray sector, some of the colleagues will raise prices, some of the colleagues will drastically reduce the staff."
How do customers accept the request to increase prices?
Yordan: "This would not be a problem. Rather, there should be stricter control over what the restaurants themselves prepare."
Olga Markova: "This increase has already started a long time ago, so it's high time they stopped raising prices.
Marin: "Anyway, the prices are a bit artificially inflated, despite the relief that the establishments received with a 9 percent tax instead of 20%."
Restaurant owners are setting an example with neighboring countries that are also members of the European Union.
Yuliyan Aleksiev - restaurant owner: "In neighboring Romania, VAT is 5%, the country that we should most see as a competitor to tourism in Bulgaria. In Greece, food and soft drinks are also at a fixed rate of 13 percent."
The industry is already in talks with the legislator.
Enyo Enev - Deputy Chairman of the BHRA: "A letter has been sent precisely and clearly with parameters, it has been submitted to the National Assembly. I hope that this year too, our new elected representatives in parliament will make not the wise, but the right decision that the VAT for restaurants should be 9 percent and should be, above all, a permanent measure."