The rulers themselves were caught lying about the numbers in Budget 2025 and the heavy legacy.
This was said to the Bulgarian National Radio by the chairman of "We continue the change" Assen Vassilev, a former Minister of Finance in several governments, adding that "Progressive Bulgaria"'s apologies to the previous rulers for a heavy legacy "do not work".
"Last week, the Council of Ministers adopted the report on the implementation of Budget 2025. In it, the numbers are exactly the same as those presented to Eurostat by Temenuzhka Petkova and the "Zhelyazkov" cabinet. That is, after 5 months of searching for invoices, they accepted Temenuzhka Petkova's numbers and sent them to the parliament and said that this is the report for 2025. This report presents all the numbers and the audits of the Court of Accounts of all primary spending units of budget funds. This report was proposed by the Minister of Finance Galab Donev, and under the leadership of Rumen Radev, the Council of Ministers adopted it and sent it to the parliament. ... If they are waiting for an audit, why are they sending the report to the National Assembly? By accepting the numbers for 2025, this becomes the basis for Budget 2026 and 2027. That is, what the government plans for the budget for 2027 is based on the numbers that were made by the cabinet "Zhelyazkov".
In his words, there is another indicator that shows that there is no heavy legacy from previous governments:
"The deficit according to preliminary data as of the end of September is 2.8%, not including the last payment we are waiting for from the EC, which is 1.8 billion euros. The money has already been paid to companies, but we have not yet received it from Europe. If this is corrected, we will fall to a deficit of about 1.5% by the end of September. In order for the deficit to reach the 5.7% deficit set in the 2026 Budget, this is an additional 4% of GDP, more or less, this is almost 5 billion euros of deficit, outside of the normal payments that occurred last year at this time, and they were not small, because the "Zhelyazkov" cabinet had set some serious payments that would go through with decrees, etc. If this were to happen, it means that Radev's government will spend like crazy with a machine gun. If they are going to spend so much money by the end of the year, and then say that there is no money to raise people's incomes and a minimum wage and that a tax should be imposed on vouchers. ... It is not clear what this much money will be spent on".
According to Assen Vassilev, if the program for a ceiling for businesses on the price of electricity is not restored, this will lead to a collapse of the economy and very serious inflationary pressure.
In connection with the intention to introduce a tax on "excess profits", he stated that there is no such thing, but there is profit:
"If the government has decided to change the tax on "profits", one must think about where, what and how they want to do it. ... What the government is trying to do will not have an effect, but is an attempt at additional harassment rather than an attempt to something that will bring additional revenue to the treasury. ...So - from one day to the next - the business climate becomes very unpredictable for investors - both Bulgarian and foreign".