„The government's end-of-year budget will not be released. Over the past 4 years, I have been the main critic of the budget policy of all the governments that ruled during this time. Over the previous 20 years - since I was in the first government until 2021, I have very rarely talked about budgets. And now, in over 100 interviews, probably in 98 of them, I have spoken predominantly about budget problems“. This was commented on “This Saturday“ by financier and former Deputy Prime Minister Nikolay Vassilev on bTV.
According to him, the reason is that there was money before - surpluses, and now there are deficits.
„Every time it appears with you, the debt is billions more than the last time - from 20 and a few billion in debt 4 years ago, now we are at 60 billion, and by the end of the mandate - we will approach 90 billion“, Nikolay Vassilev pointed out.
“Just as I believe that the national team should not lose 0:3 to count it as not being totally empty, I believe that the budget could and should have been in surplus all these years“, the financier noted.
“The biggest mischief that politicians have done in recent years is that they managed to tell the public that a 3% deficit was good. The main troublemaker is one after 2021, now he is not in charge“, he commented and confirmed that he was talking about Asen Vassilev.
Nikolai Vassilev indicated that he expected the next right-wing government to have a different policy and stop with the deficits and debts.
"A month later they voted the most catastrophic budget since Videnov", Nikolay Vassilev noted.
In his words, there is a lack of political will.
"I have no criticism of the revenue side, I do not think that the state should raise taxes. I would even suggest reducing the flat tax and the profit tax for companies by 1% - to 9%. And who bet that VAT should increase by 30 and a few percent, which is absolutely possible - let him say, this is impossible", commented the financier.
"Together with the accounting tricks we are doing right now, the expenses this year will exceed 100 billion leva for the first time", he pointed out.
He pointed out some of the "tricks" - "with 7 billion we are increasing the capital of state-owned companies. For energy - we will build nuclear power plants, PVPPs". What is the BDB doing with new capital of 4 billion leva - is this a bank or is it a second state budget? Without public procurement, without competitions, the politicians know why. How exactly will the BDB one day get back these 4 billion?", commented Nikolay Vassilev.
"I am very curious, if we give 4 billion for ingenious municipal projects, distributed mainly to politically correct mayors, how exactly will the BDB one day get back these 4 billion? All Bulgarian privatization for the entire transition of 35 years has less revenue than the state will pour into these two structures this year alone. Are we living in state communism right now? Why did we make the transition? Do we have a market economy or do we have a Soviet economy?", the expert asked.
"The other smaller accounting trick is that we made the banks pay their taxes in advance for next year", he added.
According to him, we are wasting our spending.
Nikolai Vassilev indicated that he also wanted to report on two good things in our country.
"This month there is a Bulgarian company from the technology sector that is listing its shares on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, and in the last month, for the first time in history, it received a market valuation - capitalization of over 1 billion euros", he noted.
And the other news.
„In my youth, I worked in large investment banks in Tokyo, New York and London. And in those days, the salaries that a person could receive in Bulgaria, in any job, were about 10-20 times lower than abroad. One of the interns in our company received a job offer from London banks in the city and from companies in Bulgaria. Now the salary that she accepted in Sofia is 30% higher nominally than that in London. This means that salaries in Bulgaria have also grown a lot“, the financier pointed out.