site.btaTransport Minister: Recovery Plan for Bulgarian Posts to Be Ready by September

The recovery plan for Bulgarian Posts will be ready in September at the latest, said Minister of Transport and Communications Georgi Gvozdeikov, quoted by the press centre of his ministry on Tuesday. 

"Bulgarian Posts has sufficient resources for development, but wrong management decisions and lack of a long-term strategy have hampered this process so far," the minister pointed out commenting on the prepared restructuring plan for the company, which will be presented to the European Commission in September. "Serious organisational and managerial decisions are needed both to stabilise Bulgarian Posts at the moment and to permanently restructure the company. From day one, we have started analysing the actions to permanently resolve the company's financial problems," Gvozdeikov stressed.

In May this year the European Commission approved state aid of EUR 26.5 million as emergency support for the liquidity of Bulgarian Posts. At that time, Bulgaria guaranteed that the loan would be repaid in six months or that Bulgarian Posts would present a restructuring plan to ensure the long-term viability of the company.

Bulgarian Posts, together with the ministry, is working on the preparation of the plan daily, with the EC being consulted at every stage. It will include rescue measures to bring the company out of its severe financial difficulties in the medium term, the ministry said. 

The European Commission has expressed its readiness to examine a working draft of the recovery plan as early as the end of July, so that when the working session starts in September, it will be formally approved in the short term. This will allow the postal operator to immediately start absorbing the funds earmarked under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. These amount to BGN 100 million and are aimed at modernising current services and introducing new ones.