site.btaParliamentary Budget Committee Backs Extension of State Budget

Late on Thursday evening, the Budget and Finance Committee in Parliament adopted on second reading the draft law on the extension of the provisions of the 2022 State Budget Act, the Public Social Insurance Budget Act and the 2022 National Health Insurance Fund Budget Act.

Speaking about the state budget, Finance Minister Rositsa Velkova cited a preliminary report by the European Commission, according to which Bulgaria is the second EU member state, after Italy, with the highest structural deficit for 2022, which is 4%. One-third of the contribution to this structural deficit is national financing of primary and current expenditure, mainly pension increases, and the remaining two-thirds are untargeted compensations and measures, Velkova said.

"If we continue to pile up spending in the current state of the budget, we cannot achieve any financial stability and sustainability," the minister said.

The meeting examined the proposals made between the first and second reading of the extension law. Several motions were rejected as the MPs felt it was unacceptable to make changes to the welfare package in this kind of bill. However, they will be discussed in plenary during the vote on the second reading of the extension law. Among the texts not allowed for consideration, proposed by Korneliya Ninova and a group of MPs, were those related to increasing the minimum amount of the basic salary at the lowest civil servant positions to BGN 850 per month from January.  

The MPs concurred that pensions should continue to grow according to a modified Swiss rule, under which they are updated every year in July. The change, proposed by former Finance Minister Assen Vassilev, would see pensions granted by the end of the previous year from that date updated from July 1 of the following year by 100% of inflation or 100% of the increase in insurable income, whichever is higher.