Asen Vassilev: Bulgaria has been poor in paying for seat belts for the last 20 years
For the first time since the year of the adoption of Budget 2022 in the relevant parliamentary committee on Friday turned into a real qualitative clash of ideas about what should be the philosophy of fiscal policy in Bulgaria. The new government, represented by Deputy Prime Minister Asen Vassilev, is facing the next conservative policy in the last 20 years, defended by GERB’s best financiers in the commission Kiril Ananiev and Krassimir Valchev. From the words of the Minister it became clear that he has a different vision of how much and how he should spend the budget, which scares many financiers who are afraid of turning to loose finances.
GERB: All finance ministers have maintained stability for the last 25 years
Today is historical data – February 4. 25 years have passed since then. For these 25 years all finance ministers had many flaws, we can blame them for many things, but they had accepted the mission to preserve financial stability. It is financial stability that is the most the most important measure of growth “, statement by Krassimir Valchev from GERB.
According to him, at the moment the budget should pursue a counter-cyclical policy and it is not right to vote with a structural deficit. “I have a feeling that you like inflation. You are generating big revenues in the budget, but this is the most powerful mechanism for redistributing income and national wealth.” said Valchev.
This position is also many financial experts and representatives of the political elite, who have defended water over the past 20 years conservative fiscal policy and believe that it has contributed to the smooth but steady increase in income from 28% of the EU average to over 55% at the moment.
Asen Vassilev: The policy so far has been wrong
However, Deputy Prime Minister Asen Vassilev is adamant that this policy is the reason why Bulgaria is the poorest country in the EU and lags behind countries such as Croatia, Slovakia and others in the region.
“Exceptional fiscal conservatism over the past 20 years is the reason Bulgaria lags behind all other EU countries in Central and Eastern Europe,” replied the Deputy Prime Minister.
He announced that his education is precisely in the field of becoming rich as a poor country and from this perspective he intends to rely on the new philosophy.
According to Vassilev, Bulgaria can become rich only by changing the ratio between capital and labor. In particular, three main steps need to be taken – investment in infrastructure and machinery so as to improve labor productivity; increase the qualification of the work and increase the capital framework on the page.
“If we do not invest in capital, in human resources and do not have an administrative burden, we will not achieve growth,” Vassilev thinks.
According to him, you have hardly invested your own resources for investments, but have relied on funds or, more precisely, in Europe. “that of them which shall not be departed”. “That’s why we have an infrastructure that is worse than it was in the time of the Roman Empire.” Vassilev’s application. From this year, Bulgaria will take its own destiny into its own hands and will invest 8.2 billion. BGN in capital expenditures, BGN 6.6 billion of which are national funds, Vassilev said pathetically.
According to him, the right investments must be made so that economic growth is achieved, which will lead to high incomes.
Vassilev stressed that all this will take place within a financial framework that aims to comply with the Maastricht criteria for debt and deficit.
Kiril Ananiev: You have no historical memory
The Minister’s thoughts provoked an emotional reaction in the most experienced budget worker in the country – Kiril Ananiev. “You don’t have the historical memory and you don’t remember where it came from in 2000, as we introduced the currency board and allowed the state to survive.” he reacted.
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