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Asen Vassilev
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The BNB government money sparked a dispute between Lubomir Karimanski and the finance minister
The BGN 8.28 billion expected by the Minister of Finance Asen Vassilev for the fiscal reserve is already in it, today’s data of the BNB show, 24 Chasa found.
The reduced amount of the government’s reserve money has led to a dispute in absentia between budget committee chairman Lubomir Karimanski and deputy prime minister and finance minister Asen Vassilev.
A day after parliament failed to elect Karimanski governor of the BNB, he shared a post on social media from the balance sheet of the Central Bank’s Issuance Department. In the screenshot from the central bank’s website, he fenced the numbers in the column “Liabilities to government and budget organizations”, which as of February 25 show an amount of over BGN 9 billion, and as of April 8 – BGN 4.7 billion.
The press center of the Ministry of Finance immediately explained that the reserve has decreased after paying off old debt, Easter benefits have been paid to all over 2 million retirees and water compensations have been paid to the poorest. The forecast of Asen Vassilev’s experts is that within a week the reserve will rise again to BGN 8.2 billion.
A detailed reading of the BNB data shows that the most significant and sharp decline in the reserve money was during the week of March 18-25, when it “lightened” by nearly 2.54 billion. BGN and falls to 6.49 billion. The reason is the payments on our external debt. The Ministry of Finance has officially announced that 1.275 billion euros have been paid for the repayment of annual Eurobonds in interest and principal maturities. EUR 46.95 million more on Eurobond interest – seven and twenty years old, issued in 2016.
The initial plan was to cover this cost by the two lev issues for BGN 500 million paid before the repayments, as well as by the repaid loan of BGN 1 billion. BGN granted to NEK. As is known, one of the two issues was postponed due to low investor interest. Probably the loan from NEK was not available as of the date of payment of the debt, which necessitated the use of amounts from the reserve.
An extraordinary expense for the budget is the BGN 70 for each of the more than 2 million pensioners who have already been credited to their accounts. Energy subsidies for the poorest are a regular expense that has been imposed on payments.
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