09.10.2017

Huge work has been done in the area of administrative reform, Minister of Finance Vladislav Goranov said during the morning programme of bTV. “There are several packages of amendments to legislation submitted to the Bulgarian Parliament and after they are passed, a number of administrative burdens will be removed”, he added and drew attention to the fact that part of the pre-election pledges had already been fulfilled. The Minister gave as an example the twofold pension increase, the keeping of taxes at their current level and the increase in salaries that would continue. Asked what “BGN 700 million more for staff costs in all sectors” meant, Minister Goranov answered that “practically almost all budget-funded sectors will get an increase, i.e. some of them due to the minimum wage impact, others – because of the real increase in the security sector and in secondary education”. He specified that “as a result of all this and reassuring the society, consumer trust has been on the upsurge and, according to the national statistics, in 2016 we are fourth in Europe with a growth of 3.9%.” According to Minister Goranov this growth is noticed both “in terms of the money we spend and in terms of the income growth which has reached an almost two-digit figure in recent months”, but clarified that this referred to the active and better performing population.

As regards the increase in the security sector funds, the Finance Minister reminded that if there had been a targeted increase of the income in the budget sector in recent years, this was namely the system of the Ministry of the Interior. He added that regardless of this the system could not be left without any increase and added that a differentiated increase targeting the policemen on ground would be discussed with the line Deputy Prime Minister Karakachanov and with Minister Radev. Minister Goranov specified that it was still early to go into technical details but one could currently talk about BGN 55 million more in nominal terms for staff costs for the system of the Ministry of the Interior.

Asked about the country’s joining the euro area, Minister Goranov said that this was a sensitive topic and that some of the EU counterparts who were members of the Euro Area were not willing to have this debate in a loud voice. He explained that our country was definitely meeting all reference criteria for both joining the ERM II and for the subsequent replacement of the lev with the euro. The Finance Minister clarified that unlike entering Schengen, there were no political criteria here and the key argument discussed was whether we had reached the required level of real convergence in addition to the reference criteria. In his view, real convergence should not be an impediment for Bulgaria but quite the contrary: “If allowed into this club, we will get closer to the income of the rest of the Euro Area members much faster. We will therefore continue insisting on it but we will have to write our homework, too”, he closed the topic.

At the end of this talk the Minister of Finance assured that as always next year’s budget would be ready on time, i.e. no later than two months before the end of the year, or 30 October. Here you can read and see how Mr. Vladislav Goranov commented on the topical issue of the confrontation between media and politicians, as well as on some other topics from social and political life.