Amnesty for Borchov, but at whose expense? –

/ world today news/ Valeriia Stoykova’s comment on “Standard”

After years of intercompany indebtedness growing at the speed of light, it turns out that citizens’ debt is successfully catching up with it. 1.6 billion have been accumulated in just a few months. BGN debts of natural persons, show the accounts of the Chamber of Private Bailiffs in Bulgaria. These are unpaid bills for electricity, heating, water, telephone, loans to banks. The explanation is clear – the crisis has been going on for several years now, unemployment is growing exponentially, many employers are constantly cutting wages. And when one of the family has lost a job, and the income of the other has halved, then the concern is first about feeding the family and then comes the loan payments. Although this option is even more dangerous – there is a danger for the accumulated debts that the family will lose their home, the employee’s salary will be garnished, and a bailiff will enter the home with all the resulting troubles. Not to mention the cases where people pay as much as they can, but the interest piles up and they end up owing more and more each year. In Bulgaria, a growing group of “eternal” debtors is already forming, who not only have no prospects of paying their debts, but are passing huge burdens on to their children. The bank sells their homes, but as property prices have fallen dramatically and interest rates have inflated the credit multiple times, they owe more and more. The practice of credit institutions is to pay the interest in the first years, so that the principal remains intact and new interest accumulates on it.

But whatever happens, the state does not need a boom of people rummaging through buckets and sleeping in subways. But what should we do with the ever-increasing prices of credit, electricity, heating and water? The mantra of the market fundamentalists who prevail in Bulgaria is that “a thing is worth as much as you can pay for it”. It is already clear that more and more Bulgarians cannot pay, but the prices are going up. And there is no prospect of incomes increasing in such a way as to ensure, if not a luxurious, then at least a dignified life for the people. It is even more impossible to build a social system similar to the European one in a short period of time. The state made no attempt to make this happen in the better times, what remains now.

That is why the proposal of GERB deputy Emil Radev to eliminate the “eternal” debtors met with the approval of his colleagues from all parliamentary parties. However, the question is whether the idea of ​​a 10-year absolute statute of limitations on debt will not harm precisely the people who can no longer pay? Because the banks have a well-functioning system and are able to collect their claims in a much shorter time than 10 years. Otherwise, they pay salty provisions. Their problem is the big debtors – the credit millionaires who have been dragging their feet for years. For the rest of the debts, there is now a statute of limitations, and it is much more advantageous for defaulting debtors – 3 and 5 years. With a good will, any creditor can fit into this time. The point is not to interrupt the term and to impose commensurate limits on the time for returning the obligations. And another very important thing – the law should stop the attempts of crooks to take loans or not pay their bills and get away with it.