Bulgaria’s Finance Minister and Deputy PM, Simeon Djankov, has sent a letter to all heads of state institutions ordering them to come up with plans for the sacking of at least 15% of their employees by November 1, 2009.

This has been reported by the Trud Daily, which claims to have a copy of Djankov’s letter to the other Ministers and the heads of state agencies, which include the State National Security Agency DANS and the National Statistical Institute.

According to the paper, Djankov was forced to send such a letter indicating a specific deadline for preparing the bureaucracy cuts because some of the heads of the various state institutions did not seem to be in a hurry to execute the government plans in this respect.

The cuts are not going to spare the Ministries whose responsibilities have been declared a priority for the GERB government such as the Health Ministry.

What is more, Djankov’s plans involved the shutting down of whole state bodies which have identical functions to more important state institutions. Djankov’s letter also says that those who keep their state jobs are going to receive higher pay if they achieve better efficiency and productivity. However, no criteria for that have been outlined.

About 87 000 are employed in Bulgaria’s state administration at the moment. Of these, 55 000 have the status of civil servants. This means that about 13 000 clerks will be given the ax probably around Christmas.

The GERB government has initiated a massive program for reducing state expenditures in order to bring down the budget deficit that started to emerge towards the end of the first half of 2009 as a result of the economic crisis, and, according to the new government, as a result of the lavish spending on state programs of the previous government of Socialist Sergey Stanishev.