Bulgaria PM Borisov: We Achieved Balanced Budget in 100 Days

It can be said Bulgaria's state budget is already balanced as a surplus of BGN 52 M has been achieved for October 2009.

This was announced Tuesday by Prime Minister Boyko Borisov during the Fourth Annual Meeting of Government and Business organized together with the Confederation of Employers and Industrialists in Bulgaria (CEIBG).

Borisov declared that securing financial stability by reducing the deficit that emerged in the summer of 2009 and balancing the budget is the most crucial achievement of the government in its first 100 days (July 27 – November 3, 2009).

The Prime Minister stressed the GERB party government inherited huge deficits in all sectors and took drastic measures to rectify the situation by cutting state spending.

“The achieving of a balanced budget is a crucial signal for foreign investors, for financial stability, and credit interest rates,” Borisov said.

As another major achievement of his first 100 days in office he pointed to the unblocking of frozen EU funds.

Borisov stressed the importance of financial stability and security as a top priority of his government, and announced that he had formed a special council of economy experts to advise him on financial matters.

The newly formed council includes Kristalina Georgieva, Vice-President of the World Bank; Lyubomir Hristov, former advisor of the World Bank President, and Professor Iliyan Mihov.

"The Ministers have had it really tough with what they have discovered in their ministries. They cannot stop talking about that because either there is no money, or there are contracts leaving their institutions deeply in debt,” the Prime Minister said.

“We have not enjoyed a bit of “media comfort”. They started to count my days since the very beginning. If my father was alive, he would say, “Son, you are a dummy for taking responsibility with all this deficit during the hardest economic crisis. If you don’t like what I do – you can have new elections,” stressed Borisov adding that even the very fact that his government stopped the swap deals with state lands was an important achievement.

The PM asked the some 200 top Bulgarian businessmen present at the meeting “not to reduce their business more than they have to.”

Borisov also said the fact that former Finance Minister Plamen Oresharski attack his successor Simeon Djankov over the idea to deposit part of Bulgaria’s fiscal reserve at commercial banks while Oresharski himself had done that through a secret deal with the central bank was clearly an attempt to deliberately affect the stability of the banking system.