site.btaNext State Budget Will Have Lower Deficit than Planned - Finance Minister

Sofia, October 8 (BTA) - The next state budget will have a deficit lower than the targeted one, Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov said at a news conference in GERB's HQ. In the next state budget, which the Government will propose, the personnel costs will be higher by more than 700 million leva in all sectors, he added.

The National Council for Tripartite Cooperation will convene in the second half of October and the 2018 Budget Bill will be discussed by the social partners before being submitted to Parliament.

"We have promised the Hemus Highway to North Bulgaria and the project stretching to the Pleven-Lovech crossing will be ready by the spring of 2018," the Finance Minister also said. He mentioned social policy, improvement of the performance of the institutions and reducing the bureaucracy as some of the issues addressed in the budget. "All this indisputably irritates and concerns our opponents who must find reasonable arguments in order to oppose our successful policies," Goranov commented. Consumption and incomes in the real sector are rising and this is appreciated by the society.

The increase of teachers' salaries is a fact and will continue during the next year, Goranov also said. In his opinion, this increase has already yielded results: chemists and biologists would leave institutes of the Agricultural Academy to become teachers.

Referring to preliminary data, Deputy Prime Minister Tomsilav Donchev said at the news conference that 17,000 children have enrolled anew in school due to the joint efforts of ministries and institutions. However, efforts should not stop here as these children should stay in school.

Goranov said that a markup of police officers' salaries is also planned but the debate on this question is still ongoing.