site.btaMunicipalities' Budgets Get BGN 1 Mln Extra Transfers

The Council of Ministers on Wednesday decreed BGN 1,070,000 in additional transfers to the 2024 municipalities' budgets from the 2024 central government budget.

The financial resources are allocated for co-financing of labour remunerations and social-security contributions of employees of the regional information centres whose functions are expanded for the implementation of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan and for providing information on options for financial support from the programmes directly managed by the European Commission: the Innovation Fund, Horizon Europe (the funding programme for research and innovation), LIFE (the funding instrument for the environment and climate action, COSME (the programme for the Competitiveness of Enterprises and SMEs), Creative Europe, the Connecting Europe Facility, and Erasmus + (the programme to support education, training, youth and sport).

The network of 27 regional information centres is financed by the Technical Assistance 2021-2027 Programme, co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund. The amount of the requisite co-financing will be determined on the basis of an annual analysis of the employment for allocation of their work under the various EU-funded programmes.

The transfer funding that is not absorbed by December 31, 2024 will be recovered by municipalities by January 20, 2025.