ABSTRACT
Abstract Six years after the beginning of the radical political and economic changes in Bulgaria the price of water is determined by a centralised manner. For 1995 the irrigated area represents about 10% of the command area which is the lowest level after a progressive decreasing of the irrigated area after 1990. In 1996 the irrigated area augmented due to the very low price of water that had as consequence an intervention of the government subsidising the Irrigation System Company. One of the main reasons for the low level of irrigation use is the land and agrarian reform in Bulgarian agriculture and the general decline in agricultural production. Another important reason is the inflexible manner of determining the price of water for irrigation. The methods of irrigation in Bulgaria vary from gravity to drip. Logically different irrigation systems have different costs of maintenance and operation that suppose a different water price in the related fields. In actual practice different systems in a particular branch of the Irrigation System Company have the same price of water. At the most the mechanism of setting the water price includes within itself not only the cost of maintenance and operation of the irrigation system under consideration but the cost of the maintenance of all the systems in the branch.
