Earlier this week, the Bulgarian National Bank announced unofficially that the expected Eurostat data on the results of the 2024 Budget will show that it falls within the 3% deficit criterion for membership in the eurozone even on the so-called accrued basis. This should mean that Bulgaria will also meet this condition for membership and that our country's path to the common currency union is open.
In recent months, however, the government has been saying that the state of the treasury is worrying and that previous governments have spent too much and thus jeopardized our future admission to the zone. How is it possible that everything is now suddenly fine?
"The 2024 budget has been "massaged" to slip into a 3% deficit," claims financial journalist Stefan Antonov in the "Revision" show on NOVA NEWS.
According to him, the government used accounting tricks to ensure that the numbers would come out in the correct and convenient way for us.
"The Bulgarian method of accounting for the budget is simple. It only takes what has been paid. If an invoice for airplanes, for example, is received and it is not paid, then we practically do not account for an expense, never mind that we still have to pay it. If we add that we can play with what exactly we call the public sector, we can make the costs appear lower than they actually are. However, this is worrying and does not present the real picture," the expert explained.
According to him, the chance of Bulgaria entering the eurozone from the beginning of next year is greater than 50%, but he also warned that the country's fiscal situation does not meet the requests and readiness of our country.
Stefan Antonov also claims that the government uses the funds from the country's Fiscal Reserve too openly and often and that at one point at the beginning of this month the funds in it were too small to correspond to the size of the Bulgarian economy.
"The worrying thing is that it is currently at a terribly low level. As of April 4, it is about 5.9 billion leva, given that it has no right to fall below 4.5 billion leva. And as of April 7, the state paid pensions for about 1-2 billion leva. And it may turn out that on Tuesday the fiscal reserve was below the required minimum. Although later with tax revenues it was replenished again," says the expert.
According to him, the good news is that so far no funds from the so-called Silver Fund have been used for pensions. However, why is it important not to encroach on these funds in the Fiscal Reserve?
"The Fiscal Reserve was created as an element of public finances back in 1997. This is a liquidity buffer of the state, through which it was then believed that a problem with the repayment of foreign debt could be taken on. Now it is part of the international reserves of the BNB and also as a cover for the currency board," Antonov also pointed out.