/ world today news/ Bulgaria needs a stable government that is united around important priorities. Our desire is to form one. The political forces should not procrastinate, but quickly come to an agreement and appoint a stable cabinet.
It is clear to all that there will be some retreat from the programs of the relevant participants in the future cabinet. But the logic is such that the emphasis should be on the economy, on the removal of restrictions and barriers. This is important because in recent quarters we have had almost imperceptible growth – 0.4% in Q1 of 2013, and for the previous three of last 2012, respectively 0.8%, 0.7% and 0.6%. You see we’re going to zero. The negative situation is consolidating and there are no signs of pushing off the bottom. Until the end of the year, the main problems will remain unemployment, especially youth unemployment, and income.
The absence of a government will delay investment intentions, postpone business expansion plans. The uncertainty will slow business activity. The business is cautious until all the parameters of the business environment are clarified. It is important to know what the environment in which we will be operating in the coming months will be so that businesses can plan accordingly. While there is this uncertainty, it is normal for any sane business to wait and see what the situation will be. That is why it is imperative to form a government quickly.
Outside the influence of this factor – the presence of a government that starts to act – we see and hold the following measures.
The first is payment to the business for already completed orders from the budget and, to a greater extent, from the municipalities, what they owe. The issue has been pending for a long time, for months.
Second, there should be publicity of the VAT due. That’s why we suggest that the NRA website should have information about what the withheld VAT is at any given time. It is clear that there is a sanitary minimum, but the withheld VAT cannot be doubled or tripled. With this publicity of withheld VAT, we want to protect the administration from the temptation to use these funds to solve their own fiscal problems, and businesses to be put in a difficult financial situation.
In the area of public procurement, we want better access for small and medium-sized companies to them. This is part of the problem of the efficiency of public spending. The practice of offering public procurement contracts continues, i.e. for spending public funds with deferred payment clauses – after five, six and more months after the execution of the contract, such a clause is offered for the method of payment. This is unacceptable and contrary to the EU Late Payments Directive. This practice continues and we want it to be stopped because it carries corrupt elements and motives.
In addition, we want to improve and ease the administrative burden. By this we mean, above all, to reduce the fees for public services. There are a number of departments that make a profit as a result of providing expensive services to businesses. This contradicts an entry in the law on limiting administrative control and administrative regulation over economic activity, which says that the cost of these services to businesses cannot exceed the costs of administering this service and the subsequent control. But if you look at the balance sheets of many public institutions that provide such services, you will see that they annually make millions of BGN in profit, and this is as a result of expensive services. Here I am referring to the Registration Agency, the Export Insurance Agency and many other institutions that businesses relate to and seek their services from.
We are worried about the state of energy. The intention there to maintain and even reduce the prices for citizens and households will come at the expense of maintaining higher prices of electrical energy for businesses. We must protect ourselves from these populist views and intentions to hold down the prices of these monopoly services, which always come at the expense of someone else. The main problem here is that higher prices for businesses subsidize retention and lower prices for households. This is ultimately bad for the economy because it makes business uncompetitive and again unemployment is generated, incomes cannot increase and investment cannot be made. We need a new methodology for price regulation in monopoly services. A methodology that would stimulate all players in the chain to reduce their costs, not increase them, which in this case leads to the currently applied methodology.
The state must create the conditions for business development. The price of goods and services should not be used to solve social problems. It is not right to hold back the price of a good or service and let both the rich and the poor benefit from it. It should be as determined by the market.
These are basically the main tasks. Our desire is to focus on the economy, on the incentives, ie. the obstacles and barriers to the economy, and from there to attack the social problems, and not directly, because there are no funds for this. /BGNES
————-
Kamen Kolev is the deputy chairman of the Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce.
#stable #cabinet #procrastination
