Known as the black box of the ex-Cabinet supporrted by the tripartite coalition, the Enterprise for Management of Activities in Environmental Protection (the Environmental Protection Fund) again sparked public anxiety after at the end of March the Supreme Audit Office published its report on its financial management. As a matter of fact, the striking findings were already known in early 2010 and the report now is practically not revealing anything new. On the contrary, it distract public attention from how this structure is managed today.
It turns out that, the Environmental Protection Fund, from which former rulers during their mandate managed to squander more than 700 million lev, has switched to a regime of thriftiness. After nearly for two years, all its revenue went to the settling debts under old contracts and new projects were almost not funded, not the authority has BGN34,357,497. These funds have not been generated by the increase in revenue, but are the result of significant spending cuts. Obviously the current management headed by Executive Director Galina Simeonova, handled money issues with extreme caution.
In practice, last year the fund collected exactly BGN62,663,190 from environment dfees, which is by a million more than planned. The good result is mainly due to charges for water use and the actions taken to collect old debts of the water companies for the period 2002-2009. A significant is also the amount of fees collected under the Protected Areas Act, which means that there has been an increased use of natural resources. Because of the increased use of mazut in 2011 there was also a rise in the collected fees paid to protect the air. At the same time there is a decline in revenue under the Waste Management Act. However, this was not due to a reduced volume of disposed garbage, but to the fact that part of this revenue went to organizations for waste recycling. Proceeds from loan repayments were by 37% below the planned BGN10 million.
The Funds expenditure for 2011 amounted to BGN33,802,509. Of these, BGN23.28 million was provided in the form of grants for investment projects, mostly in water infrastructure, BGN1.6 million were the non-investment projects, including information services, BGN2.8 million went to administration and nearly BGN6 million was transferred to the Ministry of Environment.
As a matter of fact for this period were only 23 new contracts were signed totaling BGN10,084,432, suggesting that the structure is still paying mostly to old contracts. For this year, the management of the fund is expect it break even, spending exactly the amount it collects.
This time the sum is to be BGN75 million. The bulk of the fund – BGN58.2 million – will again go for investing in ecological projects in the field of water and waste management, while on clean air and biodiversity will be directed only BGN800,000. An interesting detail is that information and awareness campaigns of the Environmental Protection Fund will cost BGN1.4 million. The expenditure on administration will take another BGN3.25 million.
Another BGN20 million will be invested in nine projects related to waste management. A significant share of it – BGN3.4 million – will be received by Smolyan, southeast Bulgaria, for reconstruction and modernization of the regional landfill. The facility is almost complete, and its entire value is BGN20.98 million provided by the state.
