It is admitted that the year-on-year budget deficit of the “State Management” sector may exceed 3% of the GDP, the Parliament decided after the amendments to the Public Finances Act were passed at second reading.

According to the Act, the extraordinary circumstance is an unusual event out of the Council of Ministers’ control which has a serious effect on the financial position of the “State Management” sector.

The Parliament has enabled the Council of Ministers to approve additional expenditures and transfers for the budgets of resource managers of the first order, including the budget of the National Health Insurance Fundthanks to expenditure savings and/or budget transfers of other state budget resource managers of the first order for financing the activities related to the prevention of COVID-19 spread, treatment of the infected or mitigation of the pandemic’s impact.

The proposals of the “BSP for Bulgaria” concerning the Public Finances Act have been rejected. The left wing insisted that the Council of Ministers be deprived of the possibility to distribute funds for the Bulgarian municipalities because the only criterion applied so far was “yours and our municipalities” based on party affiliations, as well as that the budgets of individual ministries should be voted first and the state budget framework be voted after that.