Interior Ministry to Start Closing Police Precincts if Faced with Further Budget Cuts

Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov has said that the institution has had enough of cost-cutting measures. Photo by BGNES

Bulgarian Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov has used yet another opportunity to complain about the "scant" budget the institution has been allocated for 2012.

In a Tuesday interview for private TV channel TV7, he made it clear that the current budget of the Interior was the smallest for the past 5-6 years and had been slashed by about BGN 100 M.

Tsvetanov argued that the money allocated to the Interior Ministry had become a subject of speculation during the end-September election campaign.

To illustrate his point, he cited the video promoting the presidential ticket of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) which announced that the Interior had a bigger budget than the healthcare budget.

Tsvetanov adamantly rejected the allegation, claiming that the Interior had been granted a budget threefold the budget for healthcare.

 "However, I would like to stay out of such arguments. The Interior Ministry has already done plenty of cost-cutting," he stated.

Bulgaria's Deputy Prime Minister drew attention to the fact that, following the closure of the Ministry of Emergency Situations and its transfer to the Interior Ministry, the two institutions had been earmarked a total of BGN 1.3 B.

"We now have around BGN 1 B. If they take away BGN 100 M, regional police directorates will be closed for good," Tsvetanov declared.

He dismissed criticism over his simultaneous occupations as Interior Minister and head of the election headquarters of center-right ruling party GERB saying that political formations typically nominated their leaders at such posts.

"In order to avoid another situation in which the Prime Minister of the country and a leader of GERB would have headed the party's election headquarters, we decided that I would be assigned to the post. I have been doing this for the past 6 years, ever since we started developing the GERB party and our participation in elections," he explained.

Commenting on his recent visit to the United States, Tsvetanov noted that the confidence of both US and European services in Bulgaria's special services had been restored.

"I am truly proud of the achievements of my colleagues from the Interior Ministry, the State Agency for National Security (DANS) and the National Intelligence Service in the sphere of trans-border cooperation with the US services," Tsvetanov concluded.

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