/ world today news/ Regarding the already presented draft of the 2017 Budget, perhaps the Minister of Finance is right when he says that it is conservative. If by this it is understood that he does not change the policies compared to 2016 and does not make risky changes in the goals.
The best thing for me about next year’s budget is the revenue, which shows a serious increase over 2016, which is visible from the report and the programme. This gives reason to conclude that income is not hidden, but is shown as it is. What is surprising to me is the increase in income from LLPs, probably expected as a result of reduced unemployment. There is also an increase in revenues from indirect taxes.
In general, I have no criticism of the income. But I have some against the cost.
A clear, coherent and useful policy for society is traditionally absent there. Because the declarations that education is a priority are not confirmed by the absolute nominal increase of the amounts. Defense and security expenses have risen most seriously – someone will say that this is good, for me, however, it is not. The country, our people, need the solution of other serious issues, which we all know are demography, poverty, inequalities, education. The whole world has united in the understanding that inequality, the dissolution of the “scissors” in the incomes of different strata, is a huge scourge for humanity. But here, our people seem to be unafraid of this gaping pit between different groups of people. And that, in my opinion, is bad.
But the most worrying thing about the 2017 Budget is the absence of a clear goal in the expenditure part. As in 2016, when the government planned BGN 2.5 billion of government spending, but never announced what it intended, did not respond to provide any clarifications. Nothing was understood, but then it became clear that it was a hidden reserve. Because the report for 2016 shows that the government only spent 500-600 million BGN, which means that the entire effect of the reduction in spending for 2016 and the balance achieved is due to the fact that they were not the planned BGN 2.5 billion capital expenditures were realized. The same will happen, in my opinion, in 2017 as well – I am talking about the BGN 2.3 billion recorded in the budget law. There are no explanations for them in the so-called report to the law on the budget what they are. If this amount is actually planned in the 2017 budget, there will be no deficit of over BGN 900 million in the state budget and another BGN 1.3 billion in the fiscal program. For me, some inflated costs for investments that they have no intention of carrying out are purposefully shown, and this is a kind of reserve of the cabinet, hidden under the name of capital costs in the state budget.
Many experts, and not only them, look at the figure of the expected economic growth. And not in vain.
To have 4-5% growth there has to be some kind of monetary invasion – either in the form of investment from outside as happened in 2006, 2007 and 2008, or what happened in 2015 – a shock injection of money from European funds. In the same year, we really reached BGN 6.5 billion in capital expenditures within the framework of the general fiscal program. And then that contributed to the growth, even if there was waste, inefficiency, theft, which there must have been. And this effect of economic revival was reflected in 2016. So, without using complex mathematical models, we can safely say that in order to achieve the desired 4-5% growth, we must have at least 12-13-15 billion. BGN public investments. But no one, it seems, intends to do that. Therefore, in 2017 we will achieve growth of at most 2%. I am not talking about private investments here, because they are both absent and present, i.e. we don’t know how many there are.
I believe that Budget 2017 is not doing the job that we expect from it and that we all want.
In my opinion, the fault lies precisely in the expenses, but it is in no way the responsibility of the Minister of Finance. It is the fault of individual sector ministers who have to defend policies, to fight for them. They don’t even follow the law. The Law on Public Finances explicitly stipulates, at least since 2014, since we have had it, that when the budget is adopted, there should be a report to the National Assembly by each line minister about his program, goals. Each minister must report the budget – it is written in a special text of the law. But no one follows it, and the line ministers do not appear in committees or elsewhere at all. Remember them participating in a debate defending their agenda? On the contrary, budgets are made extremely formally. I have bothered to read these 2016 documents – they have vague, nebulous, formal content. And what do you need? What about such a minister or ministers who fight for the amounts and their goals, seek public support since March of the previous year.
Traditionally, in our country, everyone relies on the budget of the Minister of Finance, but this is not only his job, but also that of the sectoral ministers, who in the current situation either do not want to, or cannot or do not know how to do this. /BGNES
———————
Prof. Hristina Vucheva, financier, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance in the first caretaker government /1994-1995/ of Bulgaria after the changes in 1989.
#Prof #Hristina #Vucheva #budget #job #expect
