BUDGET REVENUES INCREASE SHARPLY, YET BULGARIANS STAY POOR

Bulgaria’s state budget has accumulated a surplus worth EUR 500 million within four months only. This amount is quite substantial, bearing in mind that the public revenues for the whole 2015 are expected to reach some EUR 14 billion. If the budget continues to accumulate so much money, it will turn out that the overall surplus of the public finance at the end of the year will be to the tune of EUR 1.5 billion and the cabinet will not have to take new loans to finance all planned expenditures. Meanwhile, at the time Bulgaria’s Ministry of Finance announced the good news regarding the state revenues, the reputable Institute for Market Economics announced that the money the Bulgarian citizens earned in the first four months of 2015 are sufficient to pay their taxes for the year and from now onwards they can work for themselves only.

This good news should have filled the Bulgarians with courage and optimism, had local labor unions not informed at the same time that nearly half of all 7.2 million Bulgarians live with money close to the minimum monthly salary that equals EUR 185. At the end of the first trimester of 2015 the minimum subsistence income per capita amounted to EUR 290, the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions of Bulgaria reminds. Therefore, the gap between the minimum salary and the minimum subsistence income amounts to EUR 100.

The higher revenues are mainly due to the money reimbursed from Brussels for expenses Bulgaria made on EU projects, rather than on higher consumption, taxes, or business upsurge. However, the rate of the money reimbursed from the European Commission is not likely to remain that high in the remaining months of the year.

Basically, tax freedom is good and the fact that people do not have to pay to the state treasury could motivate them to double their efforts to earn money and do more business. However, the tax freedom is still far from peoples’ dreams about well-being and wealth, bearing in mind that the average monthly salary is EUR 420 and that not too many Bulgarians manage to see this amount in their monthly payroll.

The fact that most Bulgarian citizens live in deprivation is not surprising at all. On the contrary, the latest data shows that the Bulgarian people continue to be the poorest ones in the whole EU. This is proved by the latest survey of the Institute for Market Economics which reads that 20% of the whole population is at risk of poverty and 10% of the Bulgarians are at risk of deep poverty. Therefore, the country’s cabinet has to double its efforts to improve the life standard of the Bulgarian population and make it close to the average standard in the European Union.