site.btaPrime Minister Denies Plans to Sell 70,000 ha of State-Owned Arable Land

"No one is selling land. Period," Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov said at oral questions time in the National Assembly on Friday in connection with correspondence between the ministers of finance and agriculture concerning alleged plans to sell state-owned arable land.

The Prime Minister said: "Whatever correspondence there was between the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Agriculture, I was told by the two ministers that neither of them wants or intends to sell land, or would stand to gain anything from it."

He said Bulgaria's public finances are in good shape, "budget targets are met, revenue targets are met - all you are saying is manipulation, with no real ground to sustain it". He noted that the most outrageous thing is the repetition of the word "outrageous" by the There Is Such a People (TISP) parliamentary group, who raised the question to him in the National Assembly. "TISP are obviously interested in nothing but scandals," Denkov commented.

Earlier in the week, President Rumen Radev slammed Finance Minister Assen Vassilev for his alleged plans to sell 70,000 ha of state-owned arable land for BGN 340 million, part of it payable non-cash (in compensation vouchers). He said that the plan is "inadmissible", that this land is "a strategic resource that cannot be squandered for meeting current fiscal needs or making up for one's failure to run the public finances". He also said that it opens the door to foul play. "I call on the wise politicians of all parties to stop this risky venture," the President said.

Finance Minister Vassilev later dismissed Radev's statement, saying that no such land sale is envisaged in the 2024 draft budget. "This is fake news," Vassilev said.