The state budget for 2026 has already passed its first major obstacle after being adopted at first reading in parliament. According to financier Levon Hampartzumyan and Petar Ganev, an economist at the Institute for Market Economics, however, serious questions remain as to whether it will stabilize the country's finances or will only postpone the necessary difficult decisions.
According to Levon Hampartzumyan, the budget is “wasteful“ and does not contain sufficient measures to exit the excessive deficit procedure.
“The measures that need to be taken for Bulgaria to exit this excessive deficit procedure are different. Now they say: this will be in the next budget, we will do this, that. What is important to know, because this year is over anyway. The main things have been done“, he said on bTV.
According to him, the main task is to seek efficiency of public funds and budget consolidation, which means reducing expenses in line with expected revenues in the coming years.
“You have to approach it professionally. Otherwise, blaming everything on some very incompetent, bad people who have incurred expenses that are unbearable for Bulgaria, it is OK to talk, but in the end we are here 5-6 million people with a very limited cohort of professionals“, said Hampartzumyan.
He stressed that it is necessary to put emphasis on competence, not on political loyalty.
„We need to talk about competence versus loyalty. And there, competence should be, for example, 90%, and loyalty should be 10%“, the financier pointed out.
The European Union has given specific measures that Bulgaria must implement, and by October 15 the government must present its intentions.
„European rules, the excessive deficit procedure itself, and Bulgarian budget legislation provide for the possibility of going beyond the framework. This is not some final verdict where everything ends, but the whole logic of these rules is that if you go beyond the limits, there must be corrective mechanisms very quickly“, said Ganev.
According to him, the country must present a vision of how it will consolidate the budget in the medium term.
“We all hope that this will be done through the expenditure side, because that is where the problem comes in and that we can return to normal limits“, he said.
According to Ganev, one of the big problems is the starting position, since the European Commission's forecasts and those of the government are based on different expectations for the level of spending and the deficit.
“The first big conversation with the committee is to explain this budget. It is not only the new government that is now trying to explain the budget to the deputies and the public. It must also explain this budget to the committee. There, political conversation does not go the same way, there needs to be an expert conversation“, the economist pointed out.
He added that the real adjustments should be visible in the 2027 budget.
“Our real budget will be for 2027. In two or three months, they should show the 2027 budget. And there are no more excuses there. There can be no skeletons in the closet, you cannot find skeletons in the closet twice. You find them on the first day“, said Ganev.
According to him, the scale of the increase in spending in recent years is serious.
“For two consecutive years, spending has increased by 6 billion, by 7, by 8 billion. Such is the scale of the growth of the expenditure side“, he said.
Ganev warned that the main question is whether the increased deficit of 5.7% will be a one-off or will become a permanent problem.
“Here is the big bet – whether the reduction of the deficit to 5.7 is a one-off, as we are currently promised, and rapid consolidation, or as, unfortunately, we have seen in other countries – once you go to 5-6 and stay at 5-6 for several years“, he said.