The new Bulgarian government decided during its first weekly sitting Wednesday that it was not going to modify the state budget for the time being.

The cabinet of Boyko Borisov and the GERB party previously intended to update the budget in order to account for the effects of the global economic crisis on the Bulgarian economy.

"We found the state budget in a fairly worse situation than the one described by the previous government", Bulgaria's new Finance Minister and Deputy PM Simeon Djankov said after the cabinet meeting.

Djankov explained that the new government was going to seek other ways to fill the BGN 2,5 B gap that was emerging in the state budget. 50% of this sum is expected to come from cutting the existing state expenditures, and the government is hoping to come up with the rest by finding additional sources of state revenue.

The government is going to consider Djankov's plan for tackling the emerging budget deficit during its next meeting.

Djankov also said the cabinet expected that the Bulgarian economy would shrink by 6,3% in 2009, which would make it 11% smaller than what had been envisaged in the 2009 State Budget Act.

The state revenue collected so far in 2009 has been 16% smaller than what had been expected.

The new government might resort to updating the state budget in the final months of 2009 when it will also be working on the 2010 state budget, and will be ready will a thorough analysis of the condition of the Bulgarian economy.

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