That water projects of the Environment OP, of the ruling GERB party are a real ticking time bomb, the BANKER wrote in October 2012. But now they are on the verge of explosion, which will inevitably lead to massive debt defaults of municipalities and companies and penal procedures for millions of euros.
This truth is still concealed by the outgoing government, but with the appointment of the interim government or at the latest after the election things will come to light. However the staggering facts may be, nobody is talking about them. According to the information system for management and monitoring of EU funds the resources available for Sector Water of the Environment Program were 2.5 billion lev, but up until to 18 February contracts were signed for 4.15 billion levs. Specifically, for sewage and water treatment plants in big cities Environment Minister Nona Karadzhova has signed agreements for nearly 2.4 billion levs, given that there are only about 600 million levs on the purpose. And these accounts do not include the last acts of the Cabinet which by March 1 signed papers of another 231 million levs for municipalities to Plovdiv, Dobrich, although their water projects were not approved by Brussels.
In other words, the country has signed contracts for the payment of which, however,
there are 2 billion levs missing
The worst is that there is no where else to take the money from than from the pocket of taxpayers. The explanations that the completion of the projects will be funded from the resources of the next programming period, are completely misleading, since according to the rules of the European Commission, this just cannot happen. So at some point the money to municipalities will stop and they could no longer make payments to employees for the construction of sewerage system and treatment plant companies. To top it all, the country will be forced to repay all advanced payments received for the suspended projects as the EU provisions in this regard are ironfast – if the object is not ready before the deadline for eligibility, all transferred sums for it must be returned. And in this case this is a total of over one billion levs.
The BANKER
