Plovdiv Demands Bulgarian FinMin Ousting over EBRD Loan

In the recent months Plovdiv’s Mayor, Slavcho Atanasov, has had increasingly strenuous relations with the ruling GERB. Photo by BGNES

Residents of Bulgaria’s second largest city of Plovdiv are collecting a list with signatures against Finance Minister, Simeon Djankov, demanding his resignation.

The move comes on the heels of revelations coming from Plovdiv’s Mayor, Slavcho Atanasov, blaming the postponement of a BGN 30 M infrastructure loan from the EBRD on Djankov.

In a statement to the Bulgarian media issued Thursday, Atanasov claimed the Finance Minister had sent a letter to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development suggesting that the much anticipated loan for the Plovdiv Municipality be postponed.

Meanwhile, the Members of the Parliament from the opposition “Coalition for Bulgaria,” led by the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), announced they will sign the list, saying Djankov’s goal is to systematically crush the Plovdiv City Hall.

The Socialists remind that Plovdiv helped Sofia during the capital’s waste disposal crisis by accepting some of the trash in their landfill.

The nationalist VMRO party, which is the party of the Plovdiv Mayor, who, in the recent months, has had increasingly strenuous relations with the ruling Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria, (GERB), further informs that a private Plovdiv company “Transportation Studies” had sent Djankov a slander letter against the EBRD loan for which the City Hall has applied. The head of the above said company is Silvi Aleksiev, husband of the GERB MP, Genoveva Aleksieva.

After receiving the letter, the Finance Minister had asked EBRD to halt the loan with the motive that before city streets are repaired, the municipality must improve the transport system.

BSP demand that Djankov immediately unblocks the loan, adding they have requested a meeting with him, which was denied with the motive the Minister did not have time to meet with the opposition.

On her part, the GERB MP, Genoveva Aleksieva, told the Parliament that the Socialists had dragged her name in an intrigue she has nothing to do with.

Aleksieva said she is a physician, far away from transportation issues, and the company belongs, indeed, to her husband, who just voiced his opinion about the project, without any slander or political bias.

“The company is in place for 4-5 years now; I do not know exactly how many, because I have not been interested in it. It is licensed in the US and Australia to deal with transportation studies and analyses,” Aleksieva explained.

Kostadin Yazov, also from GERB, pointed out the Plovdiv City Hall project lacks clear objectives and cites a number of streets to be repaved that is just 7% of all city thoroughfares.

Yazov says Plovdiv is to receive money in 2011 for street renovations through the JASPERS (Joint Assistance to Support Projects in European Regions) program and the EBRD loan will be used only to patch potholes and will become another burden on the city’s taxpayers.

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