In the state budget, the Minister of Finance must propose revenue measures or a combination of those that were proposed with new ones that reflect the cabinet's policy, with which to enter a deficit of 3%, while at the same time guaranteeing the growth of incomes by law, such as the minimum wage, for the laws on the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Defense, and education. What is being done at the moment is additional refinement and by February 14 an adequate budget will be presented that reflects all these things. This was said by the Chief Economist of the Confederation of Bulgarian Trade Unions and Director of the Institute for Social and Trade Union Research and Training, Lyuboslav Kostov, in the program "Metronome" on Radio "Focus".
According to him, the real deficit in the budget for 2025 is about 6-7 billion leva, and everything else is speculation.
"The deficit of 18 billion for 2025 is based on the project submitted by Ms. Lyudmila Petkova, but this is an excess of expenses over revenues, and from these 18 billion we must subtract the growth of the economy, which is about 5-6 billion, we must subtract the allowed deficit within 3%, which, with a projected GDP of 215 billion leva this year, will most likely come to somewhere around 6.5 billion. In reality, what needs to be done as fiscal consolidation with additional revenues or reduced expenses, we are talking about a real deficit of about 6-7 billion leva, he explained.
"The new rulers wanted to submit their own budget to show that they will solve the problems, and the budget they will submit will most likely be about 80% the same as Ms. Lyudmila Petkova", the economist also pointed out, and according to him, it was simply necessary between the first and second reading of the law with separate legislative texts to change some items in the capital program, in the maintenance and move forward.
The combination of revenue measures and expenditure reduction will lead to finding the missing 6-7 billion, as part of the measures to reduce the expenditure part of the budget is forecasting the capital program in realistic amounts, which will lead to a reduction in expenses by 3-4 billion down, the reduction in maintenance by 10-15% and several other measures set out in the revenue side, such as repealing the VAT reduction, which was a pandemic measure, and the issue of the overall tax philosophy and the structure of direct and indirect taxes must also be opened.
"In general, let's see how the tax system helps growth and stimulates consumption. This is the main debate and let's help each other economically, not just reduce inequality. The tolerance of working people towards the executive and legislative branches will end sooner or later. There really needs to be an active income policy. Now that they have gathered to form a government and govern, the first point is income policy, the second point should most likely be demography, because things are shocking," Lyuboslav Kostov pointed out.