site.btaReal Budget Crisis Occurred in 1997, Current Situation Entirely Solvable, Democratic Bulgaria Says

A true crisis in the country's budget happened in 1997, whereas the current situation is entirely manageable, and claims about the poor state of public finances are being used to justify taking on large debts without any real justification, Martin Dimitrov, MP of Democratic Bulgaria, told journalists in Parliament's lobby on Tuesday. Earlier, the Budget and Finance Committee approved at second reading an increase of the debt ceiling to EUR 3.8 billion until the adoption of a regular budget for the year.

"The treasury is not empty, and these are claims used to explain taking on huge loans in debt without any justification," Dimitrov said. He added that this is a very dangerous path, and the Government should hurry to present measures for optimizing spending instead of taking on new debt. He calculated that, considering the already assumed debt of EUR 1.4 billion since the beginning of the year, the debt ceiling before the adoption of a regular budget is effectively raised to EUR 5.2 billion.

Dimitrov argued that there is no budget crisis and the situation is entirely solvable.

"The more the Government is delaying and accumulating panic-driven actions, the more the problems deepen," he said, citing Romania as an example, which created a crisis due to delayed budget measures.