site.btaTripartite Cooperation Council Mulls Poverty Line Rise Proposal

The National Council for Tripartite Cooperation (NCTC) discussed a government proposal here on Monday to increase the poverty line by 21.3%, from BGN 526 for 2024 to BGN 638 for 2025. Business representatives supported the proposed change, while trade unions called for a revision of the methodology used to determine it. The Confederation of Independent Trade Unions in Bulgaria (CITUB) suggested the poverty line for 2025 should be BGN 667.

The Bulgarian Industrial Capital Association supported the draft decree but requested details on its impact on budget expenditures.

The Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI), the Union for Economic Initiative, and the Confederation of Employers and Industrialists in Bulgaria supported the project. BCCI Chair Dobri Mitrev noted that with the 2.6% projected inflation rate for 2025, more people would be covered, and their purchasing power would increase.

Caretaker Minister of Labour and Social Policy, Ivaylo Ivanov, said that the BGN 112 increase would expand coverage to more vulnerable individuals. He added that the share of low-income individuals after social transfers is expected to decrease by 2.3%, to 20.6% of the population.

CITUB President Plamen Dimitrov said that 30% of Bulgarians and 32% of Romanians are at risk of financial hardship, three times higher than in Czechia, Poland, and Slovenia. He noted that 1,933,000 Bulgarians face economic vulnerability. "We continue to insist that the methodology for determining the poverty line should be refined and that a specifically developed consumer basket should be implemented to ensure these policies help individuals stay at least slightly above the economic vulnerability threshold," Dimitrov said.

Atanas Katsarchev of the Podkrepa Labour Confederation said that the confederation generally supports the proposed poverty line level. However, he agreed with Dimitrov's view that the number of poor people has not varied much in recent years and that two out of three households exist below the living minimum. He noted that the defined poverty line is a low figure compared to the living minimum.

NCTC chair and caretaker Finance Minister Lyudmila Petkova mentioned that the methodology for determining the poverty line, which the unions oppose, could be discussed at a later stage. "The current project is based on the existing methodology," she said.