10.09.2014

"Today's decision of the Government to secure central budget resources of BGN 750 million for the National Fund for disbursements under the projects from the suspended OP Environment and OP Regional Development ensures the continuation of these projects". This is what Minister of Finance Rumen Porodzanov said at a press conference after the Council of Ministers' meeting. He added that "it is of utmost importance for these funds to be claimed for reimbursement from the European Commission by the end of the year" and specified that so far BGN 478 million had not been refunded by Brussels but were claimed, of which BGN 376 million under OPE and BGN 102 million under OPRD.  

Minister Porodzanov emphasised that the payments under EU projects continued and they were within the resources allocated with this decision of the Council of Ministers, with payments ongoing under the two suspended programmes. "What we aim at is to dispatch these payments to the Commission as soon as possible, by end-October, in order to be paid out within the current financial year. This is a priority that is beyond any doubt", said Mr. Porodzanov.

In connection to the latest decrees of the Council of Ministers for allocation of additional budget resources to systems which are in arrears or which badly need urgent expenditures, Minister Porodzanov specified that "what we can do with savings is within an extremely limited resource for the most pressing expenditures". He reminded that "the previous government granted over BGN 800 million to ministries and institutions for such expenditures, and, adding the funds from the Public Investment Programme, the sum total is around BGN 1,100 - 1,200 billion". However, we will have to cover the most pressing needs so as to allow the normal functioning of the ministries and institutions by the end of the year, and all this will be reflected in the budget revision", said the Finance Minister.

Having finalised the financial parameters in up to two weeks, Minister Porodzanov will make the public familiar with the situation in public finance as it is. He said in brief that the situation was not good and reminded that the non-refunded EU funds would have an adverse impact on the budget.

Minister Porodzanov also commented the results from the measures taken by the revenue administrations to improve collection by saying that physical border control and the mobile teams for combating excisable goods were already operational. As a result, the Customs Agency had caught 1,000 tons of contraband fuels, almost a quarter of a million of cigarettes and 300 kg of drugs, of which 293 kg of heroine. "In the last month the Customs Agency has managed to decrease its underperformance from BGN 120-140 million to BGN 70 million", the Finance Minister said and added that some growth in the performance of excise duties was expected as early as September. The management of the Customs Agency is meeting with all big contributors of excise duties so as to comment the normal partner-tax payer relations. Mr. Porodzanov specified that the problems with the collection of VAT from imports are also influenced by the reduced prices of fuels on international markets in the recent weeks. The Finance Minister said that the electronic communication between NRA and CA had already been resumed. All fuel transactions will be traced, with the information about their exit from the excise warehouses being submitted to the NRA so as to trace the fuel transactions to their final consumption.

As to the great interest in connection with the meeting held yesterday with the Prosecutor General, Minister Rumen Porodzanov said that the meeting was informative and he would not allow himself to talk on behalf of BNB on the subject of CCB.