site.btaUPDATED Caretaker Cabinet Plans Compensation for Public Transport for People Earning Below BGN 1,000

The state will compensate the poorest with the money from Lukoil's taxes. The measures are currently being fine-tuned by the caretaker government and will come into force one by one by the end of January 2023, caretaker Economy Minster Nikola Stoyanov told the morning show of bTV on Thursday. According to him, this can happen the fastest for people who travel by train.

The aid will be in the form of a discount document when buying tickets and passes for the Bulgarian State Railways (BDZ). Work is underway on similar discounts for the use of intercity bus lines and public transport, first in Sofia and other large cities. The aid will target people with incomes below BGN 1,000. 

Lukoil paid BGN 90 million in advance tax to the public purse on Tuesday, Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Policies and Transport and Communications Minister Hristo Aleksiev told reporters, stressing that the amount paid now was larger than the total taxes paid by the company in the last 20 years. In late November, Aleksiev told a news briefing that as from January 1, 2023, Lukoil Neftochim Burgas and Lukoil Bulgaria will move their business, revenues and taxes to Bulgaria from the Netherlands and Switzerland. Until now Lukoil paid a minimum profits tax in Bulgaria because the profit was transferred to its Swiss-registered parent company Litasco. Last year Lukoil Neftochim Burgas paid BGN 3.5 million in taxes to the Bulgarian public purse.

The planned measures require technical time to come into force, the BGN 0.25 per litre fuel discount that is already in place at petrol stations will continue at first. However, the Economy Minister stressed that he does not approve of this type of discount because he believes it is not fair and does not focus on those most in need. This measure will continue for the time being, but it will now be financed from the funds that come into the treasury from Lukoil, Stoyanov clarified. One by one, more effective measures will come into force in the form of preferential prices, discounts for BDZ tickets, public transport and others. 

The measure will benefit people with incomes below BGN 1,000. The person will have to declare from which compensation measure they want to benefit. The technicalities are still undecided, but most likely the municipality will issue the discount documents for the citizens in need, Stoyanov explained and noted that the state's job is to control the measure in such a way that attempts at fraud are unsuccessful.

He expects the new compensations to last at least until the end of 2023.