site.btaBTA Director General Puts Young Staff Pay in Focus

The updated draft 2026 budget retained the possibility for a pay rise in public media, although pay in the sector continues to lag behind, Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) Director General Kiril Valchev said at a sitting of the National Assembly’s Committee on Culture and the Media on Thursday.

He added that he was aware that much depended on management and acknowledged his own responsibility for implementing improvements to ensure fair pay within the available budget.

“At BTA we are planning two things – to increase the pay of young employees and students who currently receive remuneration below the so-called living wage, calculated under the International Labour Organization methodology that the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions in Bulgaria proposes to apply across all sectors in the country. In addition, in the new collective bargaining agreement we will seek ways to increase funding for training and support for families with children. So the focus will be on young employees and students,” Valchev said.

He said they would also shift the focus away from linking pay to the national average wage, which is still used in many sectors, by overhauling the entire pay system, grouping positions into categories with fair ratios between them, and drawing on best practices from the European Union and North America.

He noted that, fortunately, the updated budget still preserves the opportunity to co-finance major BTA projects in partnership with the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works and the Beautiful Bulgaria programme. He added that, if Parliament adopts the budget at first reading next week, he will sign an agreement with the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works.

“In conclusion, I want to highlight something important: what I find lacking, or at least insufficient, in Bulgaria’s budgeting is long-term planning. We need clarity on how pay will actually evolve in the coming years, what goals we are setting for ourselves, and what the process of equipment renewal will look like,” Valchev said.

“The poor person is not the one who has nothing, but the one who desires too much,” Valchev said, quoting St. John Chrysostom.