Bulgarian Press Review August 5, 2009

Press Review
Sofia, August 5 (BTA)

THE HOME SCENE

"Standard News" runs a commentary entitled "SANS As a Laboratory Mouse" ["SANS" as the abbreviation of State Agency for National Security]. According to Tihomir Bezlov of the Centre for the Study of Democracy, SANS is an experiment but whether it is a social or political experiment, remains unclear. "The Agency has failed to become what was expected of it. Its officers have worked on diverse issues, from Kremikovtzi [steel mill] to football refereeing - basically anything a politician could think of. SANS people work in secrecy and it is therefore hard to say what exactly it is they have done. Crime now is in the oligarchy, in the various economic structures siphoning the budget. That means that SANS needs experts in finance and economy rather than policemen and anti-terror experts," says the paper.

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"Shady Deals Surface in Agriculture" headlines a story in "Troud" which says that SANS has established irregularities in the Agriculture State Fund and the management of the rural development programme. That was announced by Agriculture and Forestry Minister Miroslav Naydenov on Tuesday. The paper writes that the SANS report will cost the chief of the Rural Development Directorate, Miroslava Georgieva, her job. The new Agriculture Minister is also quoted as saying that the previous ministry leadership had been alerted by SANS of the problems but no actions followed.

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"Standard News" carries an interview with Defence Minister Nickolay Mladenov where he enlists his department's priorities. "The big challenge for the Defence Ministry is to structure an integrated defence model. That will also be my topmost priority during my tenure - to have an integrated ministry with clearly defined procedures and good relations between the military and civilians who work for the needs of the Bulgarian defence sector. Second is bringing back the protection of the country into the focus of the whole system," says the Minister.

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In a "Dnevnik" interview, Labour and Social Policy Minister Totyu Mladenov says that unemployment should not be allowed to cross the 10 per cent mark. Otherwise the social security system will be in serious trouble, he says. Mladenov is also quoted as saying that a special deputy minister will be put in charge of the operational programme for human resource development. Three new measures under this programme will be opened shortly: for people before retirement, for labour qualification and for motivation and additional training of jobless and employed persons, the Minister says.

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"Troud" reports of a police riot in the northern town of Pleven against the mild sentences of Roma men who had attacked policemen. The paper says that 200 or more uniformed men rallied outside the Pleven court on Tuesday to express their anger. It all started with an incident in the night between Friday and Saturday last week when police tried to put down a brawl in a Pleven disco and were attacked by drunken men. 30 were taken in custody that night and six of them were sent to court. They pleaded guilty and got symbolic sentences, the report says.

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"Troud" carries an interview with Evtim Kostadinov, the chairman of the commission in charge of disclosing the documents and announcing the affiliation of Bulgarian citizens to the communist-era State Security and the intelligence services of the army. Kostadinov says that opening the secret police files did away with the myth that the communist State Security held the state together and ensured national security. "People were told that if the files were opened, Bulgaria would go down and everything would collapse. But this step [opening the files] has proven the right thing to do [Е] Many people whose life has been affected by the secret services, feel relaxed now because their personal history would have otherwise haunted them for long years", he says.

ECONOMY

"24 Chassa" asks what it calls its board of economists about the possible sources of revenue to fill a 2.5 billion leva gap that Finance Minister Simeon Djankov has said would open in the national budget. According to Peter Ganev of the Institute of Market Economy, budget revenues can increase by improving the organization of work of the Customs Agency and the National Revenue Agenct. He warns though that results are unlikely to come overnight. Financier Emil Hursev believes that there are ample opportunities for the government to generate revenue at a time of crisis, including concessions, transactions in assets, immovable properties and financial assets. Georgi Stoev of Industry Watch recommends shedding state owned assets which are subject to privatization. Economist Vladimir Karolev says that the only thing that could be done quickly is finalize some privatizations which were frozen by two of the partners in the previous three-party government, the Bulgarian Socialist Party and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms. Privatizing tobacco holding Bulgartabac alone can bring between 150 and 200 million leva.

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In "Sega", Open Society Institute senior economist Georgi Angelov says that two of the anti-crisis measures put forward by the ruling GERB party will not work. One of the proposed measures is to improve services to foreign investors by improving the one-stop-shop service by the InvestBulgaria Agency, enhancing InvestBulgaria's powers to step up interaction with the ministries, and reducing the threshold for foreign investment qualifying for government support. Angelov argues that enhancing the Agency's powers would not necessarily have a positive effect.

He is also against pouring 250 million leva into the Bulgarian Development Bank, which is also on GERB's list of anti-crisis measures, and says it will have an adverse effect.

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"24 Chassa" has an interview with the Minister of Regional Development and Public Works, Rosen Plevneliev. He says the first fact he established as he took office in the new government, was that his Ministry has been a defaulting payer and is near-broke. The new ministry leadership thought that outstanding payments to contractors were about 37 million leva but this amount has since swelled to 72 million leva. He believes that the team of former minister Assen Gagaouzov were aware that a crisis was coming and no money would be available to pay contractors and yet between October 2008 and the end of their tenure in July they signed contracts for some 300 million leva pre-VAT.

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"24 Chassa" quotes the head of the energy regulation committee, Konstantin Shoushoulov, as saying that the price for heating energy will not be adjusted to offset the losses sustained by the Sofia heating utility. A couple of days ago the new Economy Minister said that the company lost 60 million leva due to the decision of former Economy Minister Peter Dimitrov to freeze the price of central heating from January 2009. Shoushoulov explains that despite the losses, the energy regulator cannot approve prices which are departed from the price of natural gas.


"Troud" runs a commentary on the matter entitled "Revolution in Central Heating of a Cold Winter - That is the Question". It says the Sofia heating utility will be expected to present to the Economy Ministry a week from now its estimates for new - higher - prices for heating to become effective this autumn. "The company has so far been adamant that it sells heating energy 20 per cent cheaper than the prime cost. No money is available for a bailout - nor should it be at a time of crisis. There are two options: a revolution for central heating or bankruptcies. But if that happens with the Sofia heating utility [Е] we can expect a collapse of the whole energy system in winter. Another name for revolution is reform. It is badly needed across the heating utility sector," says the paper.

BULGARIA - EU

"Standard News" reports that a new agency may be set up to manage the absorption of EU funding in Bulgaria. It will operate with the Finance Ministry and will control the expending of funding under all operational programmes, said the chairman of the parliamentary committee on European affairs, Svetlin Tanchev. He is quoted as saying that it is one of the ideas for enhancing control on the spending of EU money.

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"24 Chassa" reports that 10 EU-funded projects have been referred to court within a month in July over suspected fraud. The cases have been probed by a special team of prosecutors investigating fraud with EU money. The team leader, prosecutor Angelina Mitova, said Tuesday that the majority of cases they are working on concern the single area payment scheme which is managed by the Agriculture State Fund. PG/LN/


Links to some Bulgarian info websites in English:


• http://www.bta.bg/site/en/indexe.shtml
• http://www.novinite.com/index.php
• http://www.focus-fen.net/


Most discussed topics of the day – August 5, 2009

• Earthquake of 4.4 magnitude on the Richter Scale was registered at 10.49 a.m. local Bulgarian time in the Black Sea, the information of the European Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) states. The epicentre of the earthquake was in the Black Sea - 63 kilometers away from Varna, 25 kilometers to the East from Kavarna, and 19 kilometers to the Southeast from Shabla.

• “Some BGN 1.156 billion expenses in the state budget have been cut”, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Simeon Dyankov announced. In his words, the state budget is heading towards BGN 6 billion non-execution. Up to the present date, there is around BGN 2.5 billion deficit.

Bulgaria's Military Appellate Court has upheld the sentencing of five anti mafia policemen who allegedly killed 38-year-old Angel Dimitrov in the city of Blagoevgrad (the notorious "Chorata" case) to eighty-two years in jail in total. The court enacted 18 years of imprisonment for Miroslav Pisov, while Ivo Ivanov, Boris Mehanjiiski, Yanko Grahovski and Georgi Kalinkov were given 16 years each..