The program cannot be accepted as a written schedule for actions, it creates a horizon of effort, Deputy Prime Minister Ivo Hristov told BNT.
"I admit that the deadlines cannot be predicted with absolute accuracy. A program cannot be accepted as a precisely written schedule for actions, but it creates a horizon of effort.
There are many new ideas - some radical, such as reform of the Constitution, and also a change in the economic model. We have exhausted the current economic model.
Development and growth rested on increasing people's incomes in the public sphere. They are already about 75% of the state budget. This is already an exhausted resource, an unattainable vector for development. We propose to focus on an economy with high added value, on the saturation of Bulgarian industrial parks with new investors."
On the oligarchy and the dismantling of the oligarchic model, the Deputy Prime Minister stated:
"The fight for de-oligarchization has begun. The “Sigma“ system for analyzing public procurement puts them into a much narrower corridor of acceptable prices and identifies those that deviate from these prices. It is a kind of filter, since companies and firms, exposed in price abuse, have concluded implausible contracts.
There is a case of a company that charges 200 thousand for mowing 20 acres of land in the winter.
These companies are excluded from the opportunity to apply for subsequent public procurements. Here is a first, concrete and already working step. The oligarchy is a cancerous formation. Cutting out all these metastases will take a long time and is complicated. It requires precision. People expect quick results, which, understandably, we would be happy to achieve quickly. But this requires gradual efforts, changes in legislation, administrative measures, personnel changes."
For foreign investors, Hristov commented:
"I can say to investors that Bulgaria already has a stable political perspective for the next 4 years. There is a clear government that intends to restore the law and is doing so. Institutions are starting to play a role and politics is returning to the institutions. It was done with the telephone right until recently. Now you see that all ministers go to parliamentary control and the prime minister appears for parliamentary control, which Borisov rarely did. You see that things are gradually being channeled.
On the economic freedom of the Bulgarian and the guarantee of cash payment, the Deputy Prime Minister stated:
"Constitutional guarantee of the right to pay in cash as an element of economic freedom. Thus, we preserve a certain margin in which the Bulgarian citizen will be free to pay in cash. Other countries have done it, by the way. Croatia, Austria, Hungary are on their way to do it. This is an element of economic freedom. The digitalization of payments is inevitable. This is a technological process. At the same time, preserving freedom is a priority. People must have the opportunity to some extent, in a certain volume, up to a certain threshold, to be able to pay in cash. Let's leave aside the fact that there are people who are simply digitally unsuitable due to age, because they grew up with a different education and different habits."
When asked what foreign policy is - ambivalent and contradictory or balanced and multi-vector, he specified:
"Being multi-vector is an advantage and dignity of a policy. If a foreign policy looks only in one direction, then it simply does not notice the rest of the world. Currently, major economic events are happening in Asia, and they are no longer happening in Europe. Economic events are also happening in the Middle East, which directly concern us. And we must look there as well. I rather see a danger of Europe as a community falling into isolation. And this is already noticeable, as the dialogue on European issues, the Ukrainian war, is going through the head of Europe, between the United States and Russia."
About the presidential elections, Hristov commented:
"The choice is between normal and abnormal. The choice between accepting that there are two sexes, that the family is something natural, not reprehensible. Children should be raised with virtues, and not condemning the introduction of religions and virtues in school. Accepting that Bulgaria is a spiritual leader and patriarch, and not pointing fingers at him. Accepting that Bulgarians are Europeans without complexes and do not need to prove it every day with conformism, but to live with the self-confidence of Europeans."