Bulgarian MPs Set Upper Limits on Wages at Financial Regulator FSC

The Bulgarian legislators have imposed an upper limit for the salary of the head of the country’s financial regulator, making it equal to the wage of the Speaker of Parliament.

The other members of the Financial Supervision Commission (FSC) will be paid a maximum monthly salary equal to 80% of the remuneration of the Speaker of Parliament, according to draft changes to the FSC Law approved on first reading on Wednesday.

The FSC members would be eligible for bonus payments tied to the results of their work. However, those payments could not exceed the respective monthly base salaries of the FSC members, the MPs decided.

The changes had been submitted by the Reformist Bloc (RB), the junior partner in the government coalition dominated by centre-right GERB party. They need to pass on second reading to become law.

The monthly salary of the Bulgarian parliament speaker is a little more than BGN 4,000 (EUR 2,000) at present, according to investor.bg.

Martin Dimitrov, a co-author of the amendment, reiterated on Wednesday his intention to introduce upper limits for the salaries of the heads of all state regulatory bodies, including the central bank. Dimitrov said last week he would propose again to introduce an upper limit for the salary of the BNB Governor, making it equal to the salary of the Parliament Speaker.

The monthly wage of the new BNB Governor Dimitar Radev was set at BGN 15,368, or 70% of the average monthly wage of Bulgarian commercial banks’ managers, last year.

The salaries of the head of the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB) and his deputies came under the spotlight last year following the collapse of Corporate Commercial Bank (KTB) in 2014. It emerged that the former BNB Governor Ivan Iskrov had been paid about BGN 19,000 a month in salary plus bonus in the first half of 2014 – at the time when Bulgaria’s fourth-largest lender collapsed following a bank run and was closed.

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