Excessive Deficit Penalty for Bulgaria is Unlikely – Budget Committee Head

Menda Stoyanova, Chair of the parliamentary budget committee, has suggested that Bulgaria is unlikely to be penalized by the European Commission over the budget deficit exceeding 3% as it is a one-off case.

In a Wednesday interview for the morning broadcast of bTV, Stoyanova, MP from center-right party GERB (Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria), made clear that the economic growth forecast of 0.8% was real and it would be fulfilled in 2015.

Responding to accusations of the opposition of a meager GDP growth stipulated in Budget 2015, she underscored that the European Commission had predicted a growth rate of 0.6% for Bulgaria in its autumn forecast, while the European Central Bank (ECB) had recently downsized its forecast for the EU and the euro zone from 1.6% to 1%.

"Against a 1% GDP growth for the euro zone, we cannot come up with a 1.5% forecast for Bulgaria," she stated, as cited by investor.bg.

As regards the increase in the minimum wage so that it can reach BGN 380 a month by 2016, she said that it had been agreed with the trade unions.

Stoyanova insisted that any administrative methods of calculating the minimum, average, or maximum wage were inadvisable and suggested that it could create difficulties for small and medium-sized businesses.