How well Bulgaria coped with using funding from Brussels of 15.7 billion levs for the first programming period of its membership in the European Union is a topic for discussion. It has become a favourite political argument for both the government and opposition, and no doubt this will remain so. As far as the facts are concerned, they show that at May 16 a total of 9.6 billion levs had been disbursed, or about 61.6 percent of all the available funds. More than two-thirds of them have entered the economy in the last 24 months. It is well known that these funds are for building roads, railways, metro, water systems, public buildings… Quite a significant portion has been used by the state administration itself – for training, travel, new computer equipment, etc. But the question of how much Bulgarian businesses have taken from this pie has always been a taboo. True, the Competitiveness programme made available over 2.2 billion levs, and just as much was open for distribution under Human Resources Development, the only difference being that the companies had to compete with officials for them. An important fact is that before the state agencies, commissions and other public structures there were none of barriers that handicapped the private sector – the former received approval without being evaluated and their budget provided the necessary co-financing. That’s why the BANKER weekly decided to find out exactly how much money the companies managed to make use of and which ones of them have been the most favoured by the European financial solidarity.
The analysis of the data in the information system for management and monitoring of funds from the European Union suggests that the Bulgarian companies have signed contracts for direct funding totaling over 2.5 billion levs. For comparison – the total contractual amount of the country is almost 21.5 billion levs. It is also important to point out that nearly half of those 2.5 billion levs are actually own funds of the businesses contributed as co-financing of these projects. That’s why companies with contracts paid by Brussels and the national budget altogether received 753.8 million levs, or about 13 percent of the entire sum for Bulgaria under European programmes.
Curiously, the breakdown by type of companies showed that most money went to limited liability companies – a total of 287.3 million levs, divided between 1,480 enterprises. Next, with 238.2 million levs, are the joint-stock companies (620 in total). Single-person limited liability companies have picked up a little over 210 million levs, but they are the most numerous – 2,100 in total. Barely 18 million levs went to single-person joint-stock companies who applied for funds under the operational programs.
The BANKER
