07.11.2015

"It is difficult to make difficult reforms and the manner in which they are made is not important, important is why they are being made", stated Minister of Finance Vladislav Goranov in the BNT Panorama Programme. He backed his statement pointing out that the security and defence systems for a long time were experiencing structural problems in financing related to the fact that the reforms in those sectors have not sufficiently taken place and a situation was reached where the main part of their budget was going for remunerations. According to Minister Goranov the employees have no fault therefor, but "in practice the security and defence budgets are deprived of the possibility to make investments in working conditions, equipment, arms, in what is needed for the actual police work". The Finance Minister pointed out the result thereof - "we have enormous budget for the Ministry of Interior, a huge budget for army and security and doubts in society about their effectiveness which is due to the lack of a possibility to work effectively because of lack of technical resources".

In response to the question, who should make the reform and whether it had to be performed through the budget, Minister Goranov replied that the reform was the reason and the budget was the pretext, while the need for reforms had been realised long ago. "For a whole year we have been talking that something has to happen in this system, at the end of the year it has turned out that we must add BGN 180 million to it in order the Ministry of Interior to "break even", and finally to be found out that if nothing changes therein every year we will have to report the same result", stated the Minister of Finance. Goranov pointed out that the initiation of a debate about the financing of the Security Sector was beneficial for society and added that for many years the problems in Bulgaria were "swept under the carpet" and if that were not done we would not have had the banking crisis or the problems in certain budget sectors. To the question whether the Prime Minister was aware about the proposal that had led to the protests of the police, Goranov explained: "Does anything in this state happen without him bearing the responsibility therefor? He is aware of all the acts adopted by the Government. He is aware of everything happening in the Government". According to the Minister of Finance it is too ambitious to call the proposal in the draft budget law "reform" - it is simply a sort of a statement that the security and defence ministries budget structure is imbalanced. This is the pretext for the management of these structures in the security and defence system to assess whether the way it is functioning is the best one.

"Any changes made in the individual sectors pass through the Bulgarian Parliament. Without the support of the MPs from the majority there is no way for this to happen", stated the Minister in response to the question whether there was political support for the Government's decision for reforms. "In fact the Finance Minister is not creating the money; he is suggesting an option for their allocation. First and foremost here is for the state to develop sustainably and smoothly next year. We would be able to come closer to a sustainable model of economic development and to ensure sufficient resources so as the state to be able to perform its functions", Goranov stated.