Although we have implemented 85% of the reforms under the second payment under the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP), there is a risk that it will not be implemented. I am an optimist and I hope that this will not happen. This was stated by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Innovation and Growth Tomislav Donchev in the program “From the Day“ on BNT.
The main problem related to the RRP is that for 4 years Bulgaria has not implemented the projects included in the plan and at least half are under extreme risk. We have a year and a half to implement the projects. Here the essential question is how much of the financing we will be able to save. If we now start doing projects that will take 3 years, we will have to finance them with the state budget, he explained.
People who should remain silent are now talking about the topic, the Deputy Prime Minister said.
„The PVU is largely the one that I presented. The Petkov cabinet rewrote some projects. A quality project that has not been launched is at risk. We are about to do a very sober analysis of the projects. Those that have a real chance of being completed - we will move them forward, those that cannot be implemented will have to be removed from the PVU. If we don't do it, they will have to be at the expense of the budget and will put it at risk“, said Tomislav Donchev.
A clear signal must be given to all those who have started projects to work on them as quickly as possible, the Deputy Prime Minister urged.
He said that payments on projects are so low that we have not yet spent the money on the first tranche from the EC.
We have to take on debt because we have a deficit. Bulgaria has been in deficit for four years. It is covered by debt, said Donchev.