Entering the Eurozone is more important as a process than as a result. But the sooner the better, from the point of view of all the economic advantages for the economically more active people, it is also a very important geopolitical anchor.
This is what the financier Levon Hampartsumyan said in the studio of Euronews Bulgaria.
If we do not enter in January 2025, the world will not end, but the ambition and efforts in this direction must continue.
According to him, we are currently not meeting the inflation criterion, but there are chances that this will happen. The other is purely the political intentions of the people we join if they want us to. You see with Schengen that one does not want us and it does not work. There is no semi-eurozone, but there is a currency board that keeps us in the eurozone according to a number of indicators.
"Life gets more expensive anyway. Paradoxically, in the largest countries, some consumer goods are cheaper, which is completely natural - a big market and a lot of competition. Nothing will happen to our savings - who has - has, who doesn't - doesn't. It's just that instead of levs, we will measure them in euros, which is still happening today. Deposits will automatically be converted at the expense of the state," the financier pointed out.
Khampartsumyan believes that Bulgaria is the country with the lowest income in the club of the richest in the world, so the feeling of poverty is a rather subjective concept. The real poverty in the world is in Third World countries where people really survive on a few dollars a month.
In his words, in this sense, Bulgarians are not poor, but the feeling of poverty and low income is something different.
"The statistics show some figures that are formal – what she has access to through the channels that record income and taxes paid. "However, there is also a gray sector of the economy, so someone who looks statistically on the minimum wage is actually getting paid more, and we have no way of knowing if they're getting 5% more or 500%," the financier said.
It is a fact that the gap between the highest and lowest paid people in Bulgaria is increasing, Levon Hampartzumyan also said. According to him, the key to getting out of this situation is to motivate people who are of working age and are not studying and working to start working, because the rest of Bulgarian society carries these people on their backs.
According to Hampartsumyan, if no external shocks and extraordinary events occur, the expectations are that inflation levels in our country will go down.