The big question with the PVU is whether these projects that were planned and conceived will be implemented, whether some will be started at all. Some projects were planned for implementation only if there is money from Europe. Obviously, cuts will have to be made.
This was stated in the program "Politically Incorrect" on the Bulgarian National Radio by Lachezar Bogdanov from the Institute for Market Economics.
Expenditures from 2020 could even be financed retroactively and countries like Italy did it. When there is such a big delay, as there is with us, the big question is whether in the remaining 18 months - until August 2026 - something can be built, implemented, he explained.
"When it already fails, renegotiation becomes inevitable. The idea of this mechanism was to get more money outside the standard allocation of the EU budget, for which the EU went to the debt markets and took out a loan", the economist recalled.
The big drama in energy continues to be that coal-fired power plants cannot function on a market principle. In Bulgaria, we apply a special way of subsidizing these power plants. That is why there is the whole debate about postponing the liberalization of the household market. If there is a new market model, then there will be no possibility to subsidize the operation of coal-fired power plants, commented Bogdanov.
The reform is not about randomly laying off some people, but about making the system work better, he pointed out.
"At the moment, there is nothing particularly visible in these documents (about the budget – ed. note.). All the energy has gone into arguing about whether there is an 18 billion hole, when the state will go bankrupt and who is to blame."