Membership in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is the next major economic and political task for our society, which has found support in every government since the beginning of the work of the Coordination Mechanism in 2018. This was stated by the outgoing Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov at a press conference in the Council of Ministers, at which the OECD Secretary General Matthias Kormann presented the annual report on the economic development of Bulgaria. Also present were the outgoing Minister of Foreign Affairs Georg Georgiev and the outgoing Minister of Finance Temenuzhka Petkova, BTA reports.
The OECD is the organization that unites 38 developed countries around the world, said Zhelyazkov. According to him, we are currently at the end of the third roadmap, with the first roadmap being for the period 2018-2020, the second for the period - 2021-2023, and the third for - 2023-2025. There are 25 thematic groups on which talks are held and on which progress indicators are reported. By the beginning of 2025, seven of these 25 thematic groups had completed their files, the outgoing prime minister announced.
He said that so far for 2025, our country has completed the next nine files plus two that will be completed at any moment, that is, a total of 11. We still have seven left, which would or will be successfully completed this year, so that Bulgaria can become part of this organization. According to Zhelyazkov, this is not just a matter of prestige, but also a huge prerequisite for the country's investment potential for the environment in which our society develops and the conditions for which Bulgarian business can fulfill its successful role.
The major challenges facing us are related to competitiveness, and the prerequisites for the country's competitiveness are rooted in better education, a better investment environment, a better labor market, everything that is related to the better functioning of the public administration, said the outgoing Bulgarian Prime Minister. He specified that these are those prerequisites that can create greater added value and greater productivity of the workforce in Bulgaria, taking into account all the challenges, including demographic ones, as well as the challenges facing the country's social systems.