site.btaCabinet Working Almost 24/7 on 2026 State Budget, Says PM

Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev Monday commented to reporters on the 2026 State budget procedure and the deficit.

He said that the Cabinet is working on this year's draft budget "almost 24/7" and hopes that it will be adopted by the end of June. "Every option is being explored to cut the deficit and incur as little debt as possible. But this cannot possibly be done, and all experts and economists say it: we can't plummet from the huge deficit we found to 3 % [of GDP], moreover by borrowing a little or not at all, as the people who issued a 20 billion debt last year advise us," the PM pointed out.

"There are several premises [to the budgeting process]. The public purse is empty indeed. In the second place, previous governments have used up all accounting tricks and they cannot be applied. State-owned companies can't be asset-stripped any longer because after several such asset-stripping exercises they are now in a bad financial condition and the State has nothing to take from them. Some of them are even contracting loans to pay dividends and even to carry out their overhauls, they are so badly asset-stripped," Radev explained.
 
"Besides this, this year we can't tax the banks any more because they were taxed in the previous year, and all those tricks shifting payments for activities already carried out from one government to the next have already piled up in one place, and their value exceeds what the Exchequer can afford to disburse at this point. From now on, we are putting very serious efforts into two areas: increasing the tax compliance rate by a number of measures that you will hear when the budget is presented, and cutting costs, which you will hear, too, when the budget is unveiled," the Prime Minister specified.

Asked what sanctions the EU may impose on Bulgaria under the triggered excessive budget procedure, he replied: "It depends on what deficit this budget will envisage and, secondly, on the specific measures that we will take. The European Commission expects to see what action we will take to curb expenditures and improve the tax compliance rate," Radev added. "The sanctions will depend on this, but they will not be imposed immediately."

The Prime Minister was in Shumen for the launch of new production facilities at the Alcomet plant.