site.btaCITUB President Claims Lack of 2025 Budget Will Lead to State Shut Down on Jan. 19

If no State Budget for 2025 is adopted, there will be a shut down on January 19, everything funded by the Budget will stop working - schools, hospitals, services, Confederation of Independent Trade Unions in Bulgaria (CITUB) President Plamen Dimitrov argued to journalists Thursday in response to a question by the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) whether Parliament will have enough time to adopt the draft 2025 Budget by the end of December and whether it is possible to extend the current Budget.

Dimitrov made his comments before the start of the international forum "Living Wage - Tool for Reducing Inequalities and Poverty", organized at the trade union's headquarters in Sofia.

Public Finance Act's Art. 87 states that "if the National Assembly fails to adopt the State Budget before the beginning of the budget year, the budget revenue shall be collected in compliance with the applicable laws and expenditure and transfers shall not exceed the expenditure or transfer amount for the same period of the preceding year, up to the amount of the revenues, aid and donations received, while taking into account any regulations adopted by the National Assembly and the Council of Ministers which stipulate additional or reduced budget resources and while observing the fiscal rules laid down herein and the fiscal objectives approved by the Council of Ministers in the medium-term budgetary forecast."

Dimitrov quoted unnamed experts that have unofficially said to him that in the absence of a new budget, the hypothesis of spending 1/12 of last year's budget in January 2025 will not be valid. "In January 2025 we will be able to spend as much as we have collected as revenue January 2024. Experts have done the math and say that's enough to keep the State functioning until January 18," Dimitrov argued.

In his words, the Parliament could work between Christmas and New Year or in early January, considering that "it is still December" to adopt a new Budget.

"For the first time in a long time, we have a 10% horizontal income policy for all those who are paid by the Government, except for those to whom the Parliament has decided that it will give them more and in a different way," Dimitrov said on the parameters of the draft Budget for 2025. "We believe that the growth of incomes follows the movement of the average wage," Dimitrov added, noting that the increase follows the labour market.

The CITUB President said he did not understand why politicians were surprised by the draft Budget, since some of the things were due to what MPs had adopted in previous months. Asked about a statement by former finance minister and CC Co-Chair Assen Vassilev, Dimitrov said: 'I ask how the CC-DB voted in March when the salary increase for the Interior Ministry and the Ministry of Defence was voted on, and how it voted in the summer when the Higher Education Act was voted on. I will ask the same of GERB, as they also criticize," he said.

Dimitrov said he did not accept the BNB's position on the draft Budget. According to him, the Central Bank's considerations should have been directed to the Parliament and not to the caretaker Cabinet.