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The budget is like a financial plan, expressing everything that a regular cabinet intends to implement - reforms and policies.

Therefore, it is better for the budget to be made by a regular cabinet than by a caretaker government.

So far, a caretaker government has not submitted a comprehensive annual budget to the country.

This is what Lyubomir Karimanski, adviser to acting finance minister Rositsa Velkova and a former MP from "There is such a people", told BNR, adding that the most appropriate option for the 2023 budget is the one proposed by the acting cabinet.

"We are not stepping on a budget that has to fulfill the Maastricht criteria, but a budget whose policies were set with the 2022 update, and it contained enough inflated costs. There are policies that can still be used in the so-called extended budget in the first few months of 2023," explained the former chairman of the parliamentary budget committee.

Karimanski recalled that Kornelia Ninova and Asen Vassilev expressed a different opinion and attitude to the budget and to the data prepared by the Ministry of Finance, and now they are insisting that the caretaker government submit a new budget: "Ms. Ninova stated at the end of August that she advises the official cabinet should not deal with the introduction of the budget. Did she lie then, or is she lying now when she insists that a budget be introduced? Mr. Vassilev, when he introduced the budget in February, stepped on the macro framework set by the Ministry of Finance. Now not he believes those same colleagues whom he believed then and developed the budget. Who should we believe - Mr. Vassilev then or Mr. Vassilev now? You see what hypocrisy and division politicians have now". 

According to the financier, the money "that we are waiting for from Europe under the Recovery Plan (RPU) and from other funds" should be separate and not be spent on our internal goals - on social problems, and part of it has already been spent on the increase in pensions: "In 2022, we have a BGN 1.3 billion tranche, by the end of the year we expect another BGN 2.6 billion. Out of this BGN 3.9 billion, the state can spend no more than 100 million BGN by the end of 2022. That is, BGN 3.8 billion is spent on everything else, but not on the plan itself and on how to be more sustainable and reforms. In 2023 , if we fail to implement the relevant changes or make, God forbid, the reforms enshrined in the PVU, we will no longer have anywhere to take, because this money has already been allocated to us in 2022 and we will have to take it from the Budget,and this forms the deficit". 

Minister Lazarov: With the extension of the Budget 2022, all social payments are guaranteed

It will not be necessary to raise taxes, predicts Lubomir Karimanski.

Society should not be polarized in its opinion about the euro, the financier believes, and comments: "The important thing is to find the truth about the analysis from the point of view of the effectiveness of introducing the European currency in Bulgaria. I would like us to enter the euro zone on January 1, 2024, but I lack an analysis to be sure if we can. Politicians did nothing for the awareness of Bulgarians about the benefits of the introduction of the euro". 

Lubomir Karimanski

budget 2023

budget extension