site.btaEx-Finance Minister Vassilev: Budget with 40% GDP Expenditures, 3% Deficit Is "Step in Right Direction" for Eurozone Entry

Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria MP and former finance minister Assen Vassilev said here on Tuesday that if a draft 2025 budget with expenditures of up to 40% of GDP and a deficit not exceeding 3% is laid before Parliament, this would be "the right step vis-a-vis Bulgaria's Eurozone entry and keeping the debt at a low level".

Vassilev commented on a statement by Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov, who said earlier in the day, emerging from a meeting of the Joint Governance Council, that the 2025 draft budget will plan up to 40% of GDP expenditures and up to 3% budget 
deficit. 

"We've had a 3% deficit during all recent years. There is no problem with fiscal stability, and the point from now on is to see a responsible behaviour in the 2025 budget which would keep the policies that we have managed to keep during all those years," Vassilev said.

"Let us see a budget with up to 3% deficit and what it spells out, and after that we can have ideas about improvement. The National Assembly always has ideas about improvement or modification depending on the priorities that a political party concerned pursues in line with its election campaign promises. Some parties have promised 9% VAT to restaurant owners, others, like us, have promised larger tax concessions to young married couples. It is a matter of priorities and a National Assembly resolution whether a BGN 300 million excess in this budget, if any, would be go for lower VAT for restaruants or for tax relief for young families," he pointed out. 

Vassilev recalled that all budgets that Continue the Change has been tabling since the budget update in 2021 have kep expenditures down to 40% of GDP, as required by the Public Finance Act.

He criticized the Finance Ministry for failing to publish yet the end-January figures.

"The data are always published on the first working day after the end of January. This is an at least 10-year-old tradition and the data have never been delayed, but they are now 24 hours overdue," he said, adding that he hoped that the Ministry will release the figures before Thursday when Finance Minister Temenuzhka Petkova will appear before the parliamentary Budget and Financing Committee.