site.btaInterior Ministry Agrees with Some Conclusions in WB Policing and Firefighting Spending Survey, Finds Others Incorrect

Sofia, July 31 (BTA) - The Bulgarian Interior Ministry agrees with some of the conclusions in a World Bank (WB) Spending Review on Policing and Firefighting in Bulgaria published recently but finds some things outdated as they are based on 2015-16 data, Interior Minister Valentin Radev commented for the press Tuesday. The Spending Review says that Bulgaria spends for public order and safety the most among comparable EU countries but outcomes are not satisfactory.

One thing the Minister disagrees with is how the report calculates the wages in the Interior Ministry system.

The Minister's comment about the wages' calculation must have been prompted by reports in the Bulgarian news media highlighting the WB conclusion about high personnel spending with headlines saying that Bulgarian Interior Ministry employees are among the best-paid in Europe.

He said that the WB report can be used to "re-organize the Interior Ministry administration" and that the Ministry leadership will consider the conclusion that 28 regional directorates of the Interior are way too many.

The study catalogues measures recently taken to contain spending and improve its effectiveness. In one of them, the employment cuts over the last years have brought down the number of police officers to the EU average from what in 2008 was the largest numbers of police officers relative to its population in the EU. The number of administrative staff was also reduced in line with the restructuring of the Interior Ministry's organization and consolidating of second level budget units. In 2017, administrative and other low-risk jobs were reclassified to general civil servants or Labor Code employment, to reduce the hefty amount of social contributions paid by the Ministry. Investments were made to modernize the transport park of police and firefighters, which until recently relied on donations from abroad. In addition, in 2017, the Ministry provided cash benefits to staff who had not received uniforms for five years in a row due to failures in procurement procedure.

The survey says that despite these improvements, the police and firefighting sector still faces three challenges. First, citizen perception of the reliability of police services remains the second lowest in the EU. Second, spending on public order and safety remains the highest among regional peers driven by personnel spending. Last, this high personnel spending leaves little space for some important spending of today and the future, like the modernization of equipment and systems.

The paper gives advice for overcoming these challenges based on other countries' experience, which includes better use of human resources, greater and better use of complementary inputs and pay policies.

Human resources could be better used by reallocating staff across functions and across districts so that there are enough police and firefighters on the streets and by streamlining administration so that less staff time is spent on administration and more is spent on combating crime and ensuring safety, the World Bank's paper says.

Cross-country comparisons suggest that the number of police officers in Bulgaria is comparable to other EU countries and therefore Bulgaria does not need more police officers. However, the number of Interior Ministry staff devoted to administrative functions is excessive. This is due to a complex organizational structure with duplication of administrative functions.

The Spending Review on Policing and Firefighting is an input to the first pilot spending review on Bulgaria after the Bulgarian government decided in 2016 to initiate spending reviews to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its spending in the context of a moderate fiscal consolidation process.