Minister Petkova should comment on the picture with the 2025 budget, when she is able to accompany it with an adequate list of measures. What she told the Joint Management Council that there is a hole of 18 billion in the budget. Currently, work is being frantically done to find a way out of this situation, with the aim being for this to happen without increasing taxes and without cutting a single payment that people are waiting for. This is an extremely difficult task. The direction we have taken is to strive to collect taxes from those who owe them and for some reason do not pay them.
This was stated by Deputy Prime Minister and Deputy Chairman of GERB Tomislav Donchev in the program “More from the Day” on BNT.
“The aim is not to cut a single payment that reaches the people in the amount stipulated in the legislation. This is not to increase taxes has been our position long before we entered this cabinet. This task is difficult, because the gap between revenues and expenditures is huge. Here the blame is collective. Very often, the parties in the National Assembly vote by consensus under the slogan: “Let's give”, this is a populism competition that never ends well,” he explained.
“Everyone bears a collective sin. For three years, we have been repeating a 3% deficit, making people think that this is some kind of accounting category and is a good thing. In fact, a 3% deficit is the ceiling, this is the maximum allowed deficit. The correct deficit is zero. This means that we have spent more than we have collected as a state and the deficit is always financed with debt. The systematic policy of accumulating deficits never leads to anything good. Our aspiration is to pursue a balanced budget policy within 3-4 years, that is, zero”, admitted Donchev.
„We have been in the eurozone since the moment of the adoption of the euro. We have been in a currency board for a quarter of a century. Bulgaria does not pursue an independent currency policy. We operate with the euro anyway. We do not participate in the decision-making mechanisms. Our credit rating as a country would increase immediately after the news of our adoption”, responded Tomislav Donchev to the opposition's criticism of our membership in the eurozone.
„This is extremely difficult governance, but this is what is possible. There are many topics on which we will have contradictions. "I hope that with reason, with a sense of compromise and, above all, with a thought for the good of Bulgaria, we will find a way out and seek good solutions," the Deputy Prime Minister also stated.