site.btaGovernment Anti-Inflationary Package Expected within Two Weeks

A week or two from now, the government will prepare a comprehensive anti-inflationary package, Finance Minister Assen Vassilev told reporters in Sofia Tuesday. He was speaking on the sidelines of a roundtable, Accelerate Green, held in the Bulgarian Stock Exchange. 

He said that Monday night the government coalition has "a very constructive discussion" and that it will consider all proposals that were made. "We won't work piecemeal," he said.

Vassilev is against lowering the VAT. "We saw that this measure had no effect for end-consumers when the VAT was reduced for restaurant services [to 9% from 20% to mitigate the effect of the pandemic]," he explained. 

Bulgaria has already taken some measures against inflation, has the cheapest fuel and people pay for electricity as much as they paid last July, as support is also available for users of natural gas, said the Minister.

In his view, the challenge now is the rising food prices and next it will be the rising prices of metals.

Taking a reporter's question, he said that the fiscal reserve stood at 8.2 billion leva as of April 18. "There was some decrease after a payment of 2.7 billion leva for a debt issue but it went back up thanks to the tax receipts. The reserve is very much like a bank account and money in it fall and rise as payments are made to and from it," said Vassilev.

He is against recent ideas for scrapping the flat tax and replacing it with progressive taxation, and against increasing the planned external debt.

Asked whether he agrees that the minimum wage should be increased, he said that is a question for a broad discussion. 

He also said that household users of electricity will have to start buying from the free market but they will be able to buy from a supplier that will have long-term contracts with electricity producers and will play a similar role to that of the energy regulator.