site.btaSocialists Claim BGN 4 Bln Missing from Silver Fund, Deputy PM Lazarov Denies

Socialist MP Rumen Gechev told the press in Parliament on Friday that an intensive discussion was underway on the options for aligning Bulgaria's budget with the revenue and expenditure requirements. In this connection, he said the BSP for Bulgaria parliamentary group had "serious concerns" because, having fallen short of budget revenue projections in the past few months, the caretaker government has "most likely resorted to using funds from the fiscal reserve without authorization, very likely in breach of the law."

This prompted the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) to ask the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB) Governor and the Finance Minister for detailed information on the fiscal reserve.

Taking a question in Parliament, Deputy Prime Minister Lazar Lazarov, who is also Labour and Social Policy Minister, said the caretaker cabinet had observed the law in all its actions and had not drawn on the State Fund for Guaranteeing the Stability of the State Pension System (the Silver Fund) to finance public expenditures. He explained that by law, the Silver Fund is part of the fiscal reserve. The proposed new extension of the operation of the 2022 State Budget Act provides for greater flexibility in the use of funds accumulated in the fiscal reserve to avoid resorting to borrowing.

For its part, the Finance Ministry said it has always maintained at the BNB the full amount of the Silver Fund and the funds available under EU programmes. The Ministry strictly adheres to the statutory limits in the management of funds in the Single Account under the Act extending the operation of the 2022 State Budget Act.

This is evident from publicly available data of the BNB Issue Department and from the fiscal reserve data published on the Finance Ministry's website, the Ministry said.

On Thursday, the Parliamentary Budget and Finance Committee passed unanimously a new extension of the Act on Application of Provisions of the 2022 State Budget of the Republic of Bulgaria Act, the 2022 Public Social Insurance Budget Act and the 2022 National Health Insurance Fund Budget Act tabled by the Council of Ministers. The first extension, adopted in December 2022, expires on June 10.