site.btaLabour and Social Policy Minister Kalfin: Increasing Minimum Wage Not Going to Impact Economy's Competitiveness

Labour and Social Policy Minister Kalfin:Increasing Minimum Wage Not Going to Impact Economy's Competitiveness

Luxembourg/Sofia, June 18 (BTA) - In a speech at Thursday's
meeting of the Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer
Affairs Council in Luxembourg, Bulgarian Labour and Social
Policy Minister Ivailo Kalfin said that increasing the minimum
wage is not going to have an impact on the competitiveness of
the economy. Kalfin said, quoted by his Ministry in Sofia, that
competitiveness should not be strengthened by means of low
working conditions and that favouring low wages does not lead to
 increase of the economic indicators while it entails serious
social consequences.

Kalfin also argued that when defining employment guidelines and
recommendations to EU Member States, note must be taken of the
effects of the different and specific policies in the separate
countries. The Bulgarian Minister criticized the unified
methodology of the European Commission which does not take into
account the individual economic indicators of Member States. He
noted that undertaking unified measures which fail to take
account of the differences would lead to divergent actions whose
 results will not be the ones sought by the EC.

Kalfin was adamant that account should be taken of the
individual economic environment. For a long time in Bulgaria the
 poverty line was above the minimum working wage and
predictably, this did not stimulate activity on the labour
market, he said. "We started to gradually increase the minimum
wage and it is expected that the more the difference between it
and the poverty line grows, more people will decide to find
jobs, instead of relying on social benefits," Kalfin said.