“SOUTH STREAM PROJECT WILL HAPPEN”, SAYS DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER

The situation in the energy sector is very worrying. Every month the National Electricity Company (NEC) makes losses of about 50 million BGN, the Deputy Prime Minister Ekaterina Zaharieva said on 26th of August in the BNT morning programme “The Day Begins”. Zaharieva who is expected to be the head of the Energy Board was hopeful that despite the losses, there will be no scheduled power cuts in the winter.

Zaharieva said she assigned an audit to check which were the companies and in what way they paid their liabilities to NEC and because of the irregular dynamics of NEC’s payments to some companies. The final results from the check will be announced in the next days.

The purpose of the Energy Board is to make an analysis of the energy sector, to make recommendations and proposals to the government authorities which are in charge of policy and regulation. The ministries and the Council of Ministers are responsible for the policy and the regulatory authority is responsible for the regulation. The Deputy Prime Minister emphasized that the caretaker government envisaged to suggest legislative amendments, if need be.

Zaharieva also said that the South Stream gas pipeline project would happen, it had to be for Bulgaria's benefit and in line with the EU rules. According to her, not only Bulgaria, but a number of other countries also support the project.

As regards the operational programmes, the Deputy Prime Minister noted that payments to the municipalities had been stopped since March and thereby payments to construction companies had also been stopped. This has been demotivating for the municipalities,  Zaharieva said and added that through funds from the state budget the caretaker government managed to restore the payments on the two stopped programmes under the two axes of OP “Regional Development” and OP “Environment”.

She commented on the state budget situation and said that in her opinion it was worrying because the underfulfilment of the revenue was expected to be over 1 billion BGN. Another reason for the problems  was the suspended funding for the two OP and this requires payments under the OP to be made with funds from the state budget. According to Zaharieva, these factors may necessitate a new external debt.