What the Ministry of Economy and Industry did in the last few weeks was on the one hand to stop the possibility of the Plovdiv Fair to continue on the course it is currently on so that the interest of the state is protected, and we succeeded. The state's shares in Plovdiv Fair will not be transferred to a private company, they are already secured, Minister of Economy and Industry Bogdan Bogdanov said at a press conference at the Council of Ministers, where Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov and ministers presented current topics set out in their governance programme.
The Economy Minister added that a clear recovery programme is to be developed to ensure that the Fair will continue to function in the coming years. He stressed that the issue of the Fair was not about public-private partnerships being a bad thing. In his words, in this specific case, where the Fair had been inefficiently managed in recent years and had already generated over BGN 100 million in losses, there was no clear strategy for its development, and there was a danger of losing an asset that for over a hundred years had been the gateway for Bulgarian industry to the world. Bogdanov said that the current purpose of the Plovdiv Fair should be preserved, because of the economic sense of its development, and because during the periods of its active operation it was visited by 70,000 -100,000 people a year, and hundreds of companies participated in the exhibitions.
On the subject of dam repairs, the Economy Minister said that the priority would be to ensure the safety of people and specified that work would begin with a focus on the facilities with the highest potential risk. Bogdanov said that the funds initially allocated by the Council of Ministers for the repair of dams, which amounted to BGN 500 million, have been spent and there are no additional funds available under the current budget, which means that additional resources will have to be sought in order to carry out the most urgent repairs.
A working group will be formed to analyse the dams most in need of repair. An analysis will also be made of the work done so far because, according to the Minister of Economy, much of what has been done is only on paper. Even in the ten dams that have been repaired on paper, serious technical problems and non-compliance of the execution of works have been found in almost all of them, and additional funds will have to be allocated for some of these already repaired dams.
The Economy Minister said that in some cases legislative changes are likely to be needed because all the dams have been repaired illegally, adding that a mechanism for regularisation will be proposed for the completed sites which meet the quality criteria. Bogdanov also reminded about the problems with the inappropriate spending of funds allocated for the repairs of the dams, in particular for the water pipeline to Pernik, for the purchased specialized drones that have not yet arrived in Bulgaria - four years after they were paid for without a public tender.
The caretaker government did nothing to stop the Plovdiv Fair case from being listed, Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov said at the press conference earlier today, pointing out that Economy and Industry Minister Bogdan Bogdanov had found two possible solutions in one month. A lawsuit was filed to stop the entry of the transfer of the shares in the Trade Register, which makes it possible to negotiate now and look for options either not to carry out the transfer, or carry it out on the condition that the Fair's operations are maintained, the Prime Minister said. The activities of the Fair can be enriched, but it should not be turned into another district of Plovdiv, Denkov added.
Another problem inherited by Bogdanov from the caretaker government and highlighted by the Prime Minister is related to the State Consolidation Company (SCC) and the unrepaired dams and the missing, according to the prime minister, more than BGN 600 million. One of the minister's tasks is to move this issue forward because it is not just about money, but about how we protect residents in many regions of the country whose lives, health and livelihoods depend on the proper functioning of these dams, Denkov said.
In its programme until December 2024, the government outlined five main priorities: Bulgaria's accession to the Schengen area by the end of 2023, to the eurozone - from January 1, 2025, controlling inflation, the reforms and projects of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, transparency in the management of municipal projects.
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