Diaspora Minister: Bulgaria Demographic Crisis Can Be Fixed in 1 Year

Minister for Bulgarians abroad Dimitrov (left) believes in vitro births would increase Bulgaria's population growth. Photo by BGNES

The import of Bulgarians from abroad and more in vitro births would increase Bulgaria's population growth in a year, believes Diaspora Minister Bozhidar Dimitrov.

Dimitrov thinks that Bulgaria's government should subsidize more in vitro births per year for young couples and adopt quicker naturalization procedures for Bulgarians living abroad.

“The demographic crisis could be fixed within one year if we naturalize more university and high-school educated Bulgarian adults living abroad”, the Minister told the NovaTV channel on Wednesday.

“First, of course, we should use the enormous demographic, financial and intellectual resources of all these 2.5 – 3 million Bulgarians living abroad without Bulgarian citizenship. Bulgaria has used these resources before and is still using them partially today,” Dimitrov described the benefits of the “import”.

To illustrate his point, Diaspora Minister used as examples two of Bulgaria's most recent ex-Prime Ministers: the former Bulgarian Tsar Simeon Saxe-Coburg (Prime Minister in 2001-2005), and Sergey Stanishev (Prime Minister in 2005-2009), “who were also Bulgarians from abroad and did not have Bulgarian citizenship till the mid 1990s”.

Dimitrov would not comment whether or not Bulgaria benefited from them, he said that “only history will show that”.

“It would be nice to use the natural method for population growth as well”, adds Dimitrov. “Unfortunately, the young Bulgarians today are largely abroad, and we can't count how many Bulgarian babies are born each year, or how many are raised as Bulgarians, although we do maintain 135 schools abroad,” explained the Minister.

He has pointed out the in vitro method as “another crucial reserve” for coping with Bulgaria's demographic crisis stressing that it is used worldwide by many countries to increase population growth.

The Diaspora Minister reminded that in today's Bulgaria 270 000 couples cannot have children, unless they use the in vitro method.

He has expressed his regret over the fact that the Bulgarian state currently sponsors only 4 000-5 000 in vitro tries per year and only one third of them are successful.

Dminitrov recommended that the couples should try to conceive in vitro three or four times per year and that the Bulgarian government should cover their expenses.

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