May 31 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria's caretaker government said it would propose to parliament to endorse yet another extension of the provisions of the 2022 revised budget to keep state systems running.
The government is proposing an extension beyond the deadline of June 10, when the current extended period will expire, it said in a press release on Tuesday.
The decision to propose an extension was made in order to guarantee the financial stability and continued operations of state systems should the National Assembly, which was inaugurated on April 12 following Bulgaria's fifth general election in two years, fail to pass a budget for 2023, the government appointed by president Rumen Radev, which has been in office since August, said.
Bulgaria has been embroiled in a protracted political turmoil in the past two years, which has rendered impossible the creation of an elected government as parties in the fragmented parliament failed to garner enough support to form a cabinet. On Monday, the president handed the second mandate for the formation of a new government to the April election runner-up, the coalition We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria (WCC-DB).
In the 2022 revised budget, the previous parliament adopted a 2 billion levs ($1.09 billion/1.02 billion euro) anti-crisis package which included measures such as energy subsidies for companies, no excise tax on electricity, liquefied natural gas and natural gas until June 30, 2025, a cut in value-added tax on supply of heat and natural gas to 9% from 20%, pensions increases and scrapping VAT on bread and milling flour until July 1, 2023.
Earlier this year, caretaker finance minister Rossitsa Velkova said Bulgaria will be unable to join the eurozone as planned on January 1, 2024 due to a delay in the adoption of required legislation and failure to keep inflation within the prescribed limits.
As an EU member state, Bulgaria needs to contain budget deficit at up to 3% of the gross domestic product (GDP) planned for this year. In March, Velkova said the government would propose to the new parliament a draft budget with measures to tackle the deficit which stood at 6.9% of GDP at the time, only to later withdraw plans for such a proposal.
In country-specific recommendations under the 2023 European Semester Spring package published last week, the European Commission called on Bulgaria to unwind existing energy support measures by end-2023 and redirect the funds to reducing its government deficit.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)