site.btaBTA Director General Says Agency Saves Budget Funds while Developing, Urges Parliament to Equate Public Media with Teachers' Salaries

The Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) is saving budget funds while developing, BTA Director General Kiril Valchev said on Thursday. During a meeting of the parliamentary committee on culture and media, he called for public media salaries to be brought on par with teachers' salaries.

"The BTA management is fully understanding of the difficulties with the state budget for 2025, given its late adoption and the objective limitations in Bulgaria's financial possibilities. That is why we are taking steps to reduce necessary expenditures budgeted for this year, to optimize and reallocate fixed costs, and to supplement revenues from various sources beyond the amounts provided in the state budget," Valchev said.

The BTA's Director General explained that the agency has reduced the required earmarked expenditures for 2025 by BGN 3.6 million. 

"We retired all 43 working retirees within four years and young people came in their place. Thus we saved money," he said.

According to Valchev, BTA saves costs on information sources through royalty-free contracts with regulated copyrights.

"It also helps us a lot that we are the headquarters of the Association of Balkan News Agencies. We became such in 2022. We were also accepted, and not easily, into the club of the world's largest agencies - MINDS International (Media Innovation Network)," added BTA's Director General.

In 2022 and 2023, BTA achieved almost triple the revenue of the BGN 300,000 per year set by the Ministry of Finance, he added. He said the agency was trying to supplement the insufficient funds for capital expenditure with projects under various national and European programmes. 

Valchev noted that through a total of eight projects over the past four years, BTA has received over BGN 2 million in funds directly from Brussels.

"BTA has always sought funds with accurate and clear calculations for funding from the state budget, and that is why we are asking the Parliament, in the eventual reallocation of money in the state budget for 2025, to consider equating the salaries of public media and experts in the Council for Electronic Media with those of teachers," Valchev said. He said this means that these salaries should be increased to 125% of the national average salary.

He noted that Bulgaria would only benefit from better quality journalism.