14.01.2013

The proposals to increase the remuneration of the Prime Minister, the National Assembly Speaker and the President that were drafted already in April 2012 would not be tabled in Parliament, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Simeon Djankov stated in the BNT1 Denyat Zapochva program. \"I understand that it is not the time to discuss any changes in the remuneration of the first three persons in the state, although our proposals would have been applied to the next government\", Djankov specified. These legislative initiatives are part of the overall strategy for reforms in the public administration. The Deputy Prime Minister reminded that the previous government compensated the low remuneration of senior government positions by supplementary income from participation in the management of state owned companies. According to Simeon Djankov notably that unregulated receipt of high remuneration from state owned companies was an unfair practice of the previous government.

With regard to the other proposed by the MoF legislative change to introduce urgent tax investigation the Finance Minister specified that \"this is a small first step towards more rights of the NRA when exercising their main functions, namely a possibility the revenue authorities, when they find a violation, to take down verbal explanations from the persons responsible in the audited entity on an issue that has arisen during the examination\". It is foreseen such documentation to be forwarded to the economic police and the Prosecutor\'s Office and the changes envisaged do not aim at taking over the functions of the investigating authorities, the Minister of Finance emphasized.

Deputy Prime Minister Djankov commented also some social policy aspects specifying that a family income taxation law would not address the demographic problem in our country - an idea that had been launched lately. According to the Deputy Prime Minister a decisive factor for giving birth to more children would be the conditions created for the families to take care and raise their children and not how much they would take from the state for a second or third child.

On the topic for addressing unemployment the Deputy Prime Minister again noted that together with the Social Ministry work was going on programs to include in the labour market young specialists who had just finished their education, as well as in respect of the long term unemployed. Such measure, for instance, is the state budget to cover the payment of social security contributions and taxes for 1 year for such persons employed by the private sector.