A bill on big retail chains will go to parliament by the end of the year, agriculture minister Plamen Abrovski said on Bulgarian National Television (BNT) morning show "The Day Begins". Meanwhile, state institutions are checking every store of one of the country's four big chains.

The checks began yesterday, continue today and will end tomorrow.

Abrovski said Bulgaria is the only country without a law on retail chains. The new rules will cover the chains' opening hours, whether they may open new stores, and how much floor space their outlets should have.

The minister asked what happens when two identical stores of the same chain end up 500 metres apart and two more appear around them. He said this brings traffic jams and more noise.

Abrovski also described a meeting with a representative of a retail chain, who told him the company would invest €150m in Bulgaria. "You will invest 150 million, you will build new stores, but won't you kill those stores through the mark-up for the Bulgarian citizen?" the minister said he asked. The representative replied that he had not thought about it.

On the checks, Abrovski said the institutions are not hunting anyone, only inspecting. He said the aim is for people to have good-quality, healthy and safe food, and for the state to understand how prices are formed.

"We want to see how this pricing comes about, so that milk in Luxembourg is cheaper than in Sofia," the minister told BNT.