„The BNB and the government have the necessary readiness. We are going to use the next six months in the best way, to calm people down, to provide adequate information, so that the introduction of the euro next year goes without problems and tremors.“ He said this in „Face to Face“ on bTV Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Innovation and Growth Tomislav Donchev.
According to him, every new thing is associated with fears, but he guarantees that a month or two after the introduction of the euro “all the dramas and worries will have disappeared“.
“People will have forgotten about all the prophets who explained what a catastrophe would happen“, he added.
“There is no need for a powdered, sugary story. The euro in itself is an opportunity – it depends on both business and the state whether it will take advantage of this opportunity. The euro provides a chance for additional investment interest, because Bulgaria is already in a different place on the investment map. Reputationally it looks different – country from the core of Europe“, commented Donchev.
According to him, the euro is an opportunity that Bulgaria should take advantage of in the best way.
What has been renegotiated in the Recovery and Resilience Plan?
„We renegotiated two things mainly in the Recovery and Resilience Plan. The first is the investments themselves – the projects under the plan. The implementation of the plan has been catastrophically delayed. After four years of implementation, payments were at 8%“, explained Donchev
He gave an example of 300 million for water and sanitation projects – in his words, an extremely important investment, but it has not started and there has been no public procurement.
„We transferred the same ones to the operational program &ndquo;Environment“. People in settlements who need such an investment will have the opportunity to implement it, but no longer as part of the PVP, because a project in the water sector is implemented in 4-5 years,“ explained Donchev.
“At the same time, projects that are moving at a good speed - for example, the metro in Sofia, we even provided additional financing there“, he said.
“Secondly, some of the reforms were reviewed. For example, the liberalization of the household market. This cannot be organized in a month or two and that is why this reform was postponed“, Tomislav Donchev also pointed out.
“Roughly, so far we have received a little over 3 billion leva from the first payment. By the end of the implementation of the national plan, we should receive about 9 billion leva. "If everything goes well, I believe that within this year we could easily receive at least another 3 billion leva," said the Deputy Prime Minister.