Bulgarian President Slams Govt for Ruining Decentralization

Bulgarian President Parvanov has urged a renewed campaign for financial decentralization. Photo by BGNES

Bulgaria's past three governments have failed with financial decentralization, and the 2011 state budget will be no different, President Georgi Parvanov told a meeting of local authorities.

Parvanov addressed Thursday the 7th annual meeting of the Bulgarian local authorities that took place in the Black Sea resort Albena.

The President urged the Parliament and Cabinet of the ruling center-right GERB party, which which he has generally been at odds, to focus its budget debates on the financial decentralization strategy.

This would entail granting the municipalities greater powers to determine local taxes and/or to retain some of the VAT in their budgets. Finance Minister Djankov, however, has said that no such measures have been envisaged for 2011.

The Bulgarian mayors have made it clear they had three immediate major demands for the central government: allocating additional BGN 14 M for human resources and staff, BGN 7 M more for municipal infrastructure, and BGN 6 M more for snow cleaning.

"We hear more and more often questions about the bankruptcy of municipalities, new territorial units. My data shows that the combined debt of the municipalities is BGN 200 M. A problem which is especially important is whether we are heading down a model of a vague center, and extremely underdeveloped periphery of the local authorities. The crisis must be used to restructure the economy, and financial decentralization is among the main problems on the mayors' agenda. We need to differentiate between the municipalities since the uniform approach hurts some of them with respect to the availability of the same services," the President declared.

The President did use the tribune of the forum to criticize the Borisov Cabinet in another direction – with respect to the saga with the detention and recent release of former undercover agent Aleksei Petrov, which caused a renewed clash between the executive and the judiciary.

"There is a police soap opera at the moment. But if people want interesting series, the Bulgarian channels are showing decent hits at the moment. What people now need is good health care, education, order, and peace, and strong and stable municipalities," Parvanov stated.

During the forum, the northeastern Dobrich Municipality received the prize of "a municipality-reformer."

We need your support so Novinite.com can keep delivering news and information about Bulgaria! Thank you!