In fact, you have the hottest news, so to speak, because we adopted the budget only hours ago and hardly anyone else has managed to comment on it. Indeed, the session lasted until about 3.30 last night. The budget was adopted on first reading. The theses of the opposition in the face of "Vazrazhdane" and "Prodlovzhavame svetlit" were standard. In fact, "Prodlovzhavame svetlit" had a confused, watering statement by Asen Vassilev, while "Vazrazhdane" almost the entire group spoke out to stall for time – this has been their strategy lately. This was said in the program "Morning in Focus" on Radio "Focus" by the Chairman of the Budget and Finance Committee and GERB MP Delyan Dobrev.
"On first reading, the budget is adopted in the form in which it was submitted by the Council of Ministers. No changes can be made there, you know. If any changes are made to the policies and numbers, this happens between the first and second reading. So it was a bit unnecessary to stay up until 3:30, but these are normal parliamentary tricks, so we are not complaining., added Dobrev.
"Usually it is not good practice for the National Assembly to reshape the budget between the first and second reading, because what the level of revenues is and what the planned expenditures are is subject to analysis, a careful analysis by the administration. And when the National Assembly starts to mess with the numbers, it usually becomes a problem. We have seen such problems in recent years. The level of spending in the state is currently much higher. The revenue part is extremely ambitious, with a risk of not being fulfilled, but ultimately these are the estimates of the Ministry of Finance. Let's hope that they will cope well with this significantly increased collection rate," he also said.
This is the possible budget, because it first of all takes into account the commitments made for increased salaries, pensions, social expenses, etc., which have increased dramatically in the last 4 years, Delyan Dobrev was categorical.
"They increased by many, many billions, by tens of billions I would say. GERB's last budget in 2021 is for about 50 billion leva in expenses, and the one we voted on last night is for almost 100 billion leva in expenses. That is, the state's spending has doubled in just a few years. And the problem with this increase in spending is that, firstly, they are a larger percentage of GDP, which percentage of GDP and level of GDP revenue cannot be guaranteed by the tax system, i.e. the tax system collects less than the spending in the budget. But the bigger problem is that the additional 50 billion in spending is not for investments in the state and economic growth, but for pensions, for social spending, for salaries of civil servants. In fact, what happened in 2021 is that the conservative fiscal model that we had since the time of Kostov, from the last bankruptcy of the state in 1997, until 2021, the stable level of spending in terms of social spending, pensions - about 14% of GDP, and salaries of civil servants - about 7% of GDP, suddenly jumped dramatically in 2021. with the new policy of "Change", with only these two items, expenditures increased by between 5 and 6% of the gross domestic product. And considering that the deficit limit is 3%, increasing expenditures by 6% of GDP, in these two items alone, puts the state in an extremely difficult situation. So we spend twice as much money, but this twice as much money is spent, not invested, roughly speaking. It is spent on consumption, and not invested in the growth of the state, the growth of the economy," said the chairman of the Budget and Finance Committee.