„There were views on whether the pensions of the most vulnerable part could not be increased less, but I as a minister was absolutely categorical, as were my colleagues from the BSP, and we said that this is not permissible and there is no way the BSP could be in government and such an incident could occur“. This was commented on bTV by the Minister of Labor and Social Policy Borislav Gutsanov.
In his words, in the end, the dialogue prevailed.
„This dialogue may have been more heated, especially late on Tuesday evening, but I am infinitely grateful to my colleagues from GERB and ITN, who came to the conclusion that this could not be done. From the very beginning, we were aware that there would be such moments, but reason prevailed. The leaders of the other formations treated our intransigence with extreme respect“, the minister noted.
Thus, the most vulnerable part of Bulgarians - over 2 million people, will receive what is fair, Gutsanov added.
„We are talking about 417 million leva, it is not a lot. The country's pensions are 24.1 billion leva, which is 11.2 percent, which is an extremely high amount of GDP. 417 million leva against the background of 24 billion leva will be found. In this case, no debt will be incurred, it will most likely be at the expense of infrastructure projects, but these funds will be found“, said Borislav Gutsanov.
“This budget is the maximum collected in the difficult situation we are in. Our vision was that people's social benefits should not be touched in any way. They already live a difficult and hard life, it remains to collect funds from the most vulnerable part. Social benefits will be 580 million leva more for assistants – with 368 million leva more“, he added.
Raising the maximum social security income
“On Monday, we will comment at a tripartite meeting with employers and unions on what and how to do it. They also have claims about the minimum wage, that 1077 leva is too high, but in the end, can someone live on 1100 leva? However, we must be realistic, when you go to the store to buy cheese and yellow cheese, what do these numbers look like“, the Minister of Social Affairs also said.
He rejected the information that the minimum wage will be frozen and stated that it will continue to increase compared to the average.
According to him, however, the amount of maternity benefits remains the same – 780 leva, and in the future it will be thought of incentivizing mothers to return to work.
Salaries in the Ministry of Internal Affairs
„There is a decision of the National Assembly that we made last year and there is no way that it will not be respected and we can say „change it“. There must be consistency, principle and compliance with the law. The National Assembly has made the decision, we as a government need to implement it
The War in Ukraine Borislav Gutsanov stated that the declaration not to send Bulgarian military personnel to Ukraine is a huge step forward in the right direction, and further discussion will be held on whether Bulgaria should continue to send weapons to Kiev.