site.btaTrade Unions Confederation President: State Budget Update Needed by Year's End

By this year's end the state budget needs to be updated again, Plamen Dimitrov, President of the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions in Bulgaria (CITUB), said during a visit here on Thursday. If snap general elections are held, there will be a new parliament by mid-October where the future caretaker government could table the draft budget revision.

The rising inflation, which CITUB experts expect to reach 20% on an annual basis, will lead to the accumulation of additional budget resources - around BGN 500 million - that can be distributed through the update, he argued.

The 2022 State Budget Act has already been revised once, back in June.

Dimitrov also said that the CITUB is currently calling on employers in all sectors to increase the salaries in the second half of 2022 to at least partially compensate people for inflation. 

The employees of the Bulgarian Food Safety Agency, the Executive Forest Agency, and the Hail Suppression Agency are ready to go on strike with demands for a 15% pay raise as of July 1. CITUB's negotiations on the matter with the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry will end within days, Dimitrov noted. 

There is tension also over the Environment Ministry's latest proposal to close down the coal-fired plants in the country by 2030, rather than 2038. According to the CITUB President, the problem in this branch stems from Bulgaria's commitment to reduce its energy sector emissions by 40% by 2026. This is unachievable and needs to be renegotiated with the country's EU partners, Dimitrov said.