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Bulgaria Adopts 2010 Budget
Sofia | 03 December 2009 |
When the overall budget was finally passed, it foresaw a small budget deficit of 465.7 million levs, or 0.7 percent of gross domestic product.
It foresaw total spending of 26.9 billion levs, some 11 per cent less than the 2009 budget plan, while revenues were at 26.5 billion levs, down 19 per cent, due primarily to an expected six per cent decline in growth, the budget law showed.
It foresees a freeze in public sector salaries and pensions as well as cuts in administration numbers. Spending was also reduced.
The government says it will lead a tight fiscal policy to protect the stability of the lev, which is pegged to the euro via a currency board. It sees the economy contracting by 2 per cent in 2010, after an expected fall of 6 per cent this year.
Financial analysts have praised the government's efforts to cut spending.
"Budget 2010 is the big step forward for getting out of the economic crisis," Finance Minister Simeon Dyankov said, as quoted by Sofia Echo. "It is a fair budget. There isn't much money in it, but this is what we've got and we will use it as needed," he said.
"We are doing all we can to achieve positive results by the spring of next year," he said. He said he expects Bulgaria's economy to bottom out in the first four months of 2010, after which an expected recovery will boost revenue.
A large number of the bill's provisions were passed without the votes of the right-wing Order, Law and Justice party, whose MPs left the floor after the majority rejected the party's motion for cutting the 2010 budget of the Presidency by one million leva, Sofia Echo reports.
In the end budget of President Georgi Purvanov was kept at 4.23 million leva for 2010.The largest party in opposition, the former ruling Bulgarian Socialist Party, also refused to debate most of the bill's provisions.
