A loss of resources under EU-funded programmes in 2022 was registered only from the funds for territorial plans, which amounted to EUR 97 million, Finance Minister Assen Vassilev said here on Thursday. He was speaking to MPs from the parliamentary Committee on European Union Affairs about the progress made on the programmes co-funded by the EU, the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, and management of the risk of losing EU resources.
Vassilev was taking a question by Galya Zhelyazkova of GERB-UDF about the amount of resources lost under EU-funded programmes last year.
In the Minister’s words, resources have been lost in the water and sewerage sector as well, but that loss has been included in the data for 2023. No work has been done on the territorial plans, no talks have been held with the people in the regions nor has the necessary strategy for these regions’ development been elaborated in order to absorb the funds for territorial plans, he said. The meetings and discussions with the mayors on site have began and will be concluded in late August. The conceptual projects will be finished and adopted by the end of 2023, he noted.
The resources under programmes that should be distributed by the year’s end amount to EUR 552 million, Vassilev also said. The sums are divided by branches, and a check should be conducted to determine which projects are risky and where there are substitute projects that could be used.
Tomislav Donchev of GERB-UDF said that for 16 years, Bulgaria has not lost resources from the EU with the exception of “the scandalous EUR 2 million for fisheries”. “You speak of millions in losses with such ease, but that is fatal, because the EU does not give us a discount for the amount of our annual installments. These data of yours are scary,” he told the Finance Minister. According to Donchev, the State is in an emergency regime and is losing huge resources. “The Prime Minister should forbid the ministers from going on leave, and they should mobilize the systems to work,” Donchev argued. He asked the Finance Minister how he will reduce the losses.
Vassilev replied that he is concerned not so much about the unabsorbed resources as he is about the resources lost due to badly implemented public procurement procedures. In the water and sewerage sector, for example, nearly BGN 500,000,000 had to be taken from the state budget due to water and sewerage operators tolerating one contractor and disqualifying the others because of a non-competitive principle.
/NZ/
