The first and second budgets were not adopted for several reasons: huge deficits, which are officially 3, but in reality they are closer to 8 in both budgets. Huge spending, which is approaching 50% of GDP with a legal limit in the Public Finance Act of 40%, as it was throughout the transition. This was said by the former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy, Transport and State Administration and Administrative Reform in three consecutive governments, Nikolay Vassilev, in the program "Bulgaria, Europe and the World" on Radio FOCUS.
In his words, the extension budget, which passed the first reading in the relevant committee, is like "putting on a spare tire" and is a temporary solution. "I think we need a budget turnaround that will put us back on track, where we were in the previous 25 years", he added.
"For me, a more correct budget policy from a more reformist government, which would resemble the budgets between 1997 and 2020 more or less, would be the following: the state should spend below 40% of GDP and have a budget surplus, and launch many reforms, which it has not launched for I don't know what decade", commented the former deputy prime minister.
According to Nikolay Vassilev, the positive thing about the extension budget is that less will be spent. "With the extension budget, we will repeat 2025, which was generous and wasteful. In other words, the state with a hundred billion leva per year will not starve. 5 years ago it was 42 billion leva, and now it is over 100", he said.
"I don't hear any party talking about any reforms. There are few of them, and when some of them were in some configuration of power in recent years, they didn't even start or plan anything. They just talk when they are in opposition and don't finish anything when they are in power. For me, this trend started from the first caretaker government of the current president in the spring of 2021, when the only nouns and verbs that the political class knows are only handing out more money from the state budget,", Vassilev emphasized.