Obviously, the draft budget for 2026 will be adopted by the majority only because of party discipline, and not because 100 or so deputies like it. So far, I have not heard anyone like it. This was stated by the former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy in three consecutive governments Nikolay Vassilev in the program "Metronome" on Radio "Focus".
"The budget is turbo-leftist, populist, wasteful, it has no policies, no ideas, no reforms. For me it is a surprisingly big disappointment", he said.
Vassilev categorically disagrees with yesterday's statement by Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov, according to whom Bulgaria will switch to the euro during next year's budget without strong inflationary shocks and without reducing incomes. "The bigger the deficit, and it is huge, the bigger the debt, and it is huge, and the bigger the government spending, which is also huge, the higher the inflation will be. In fact, the only source of inflation in the country is the large government spending and the constantly increasing salaries in the public sector and social spending to infinity. This is the source of inflation and in fact this budget is raising inflation," the former deputy prime minister emphasized.
According to him, the amount of spending in the draft budget is unheard of as a percentage of GDP for the entire Transition, which has already lasted 36 years.
Furthermore, Nikolay Vassilev does not support the 3 percent deficit. "There should be no deficits at all, because the years are good right now. Right now we do not have a pandemic, there is no natural disaster or migrant wave, there is no war. What is the reason for year after year after year that we are blowing out the spending and the deficit?", he asked.
"Our society has been working in recent years only to pay ever-increasing social costs and ever-increasing salaries and bonuses in the public sector. There are no other topics in the state. The highways will not be built, right? "We may have built some bridges, tunnels, nothing remarkable is happening in the country, but salaries and bonuses are being distributed," said the former Minister of Economy.