Over 60 municipal projects under the Regional Development Operational Programme are high-risk ones and apart from the fact that they can fail they are likely to drag city budgets in the red. In critical condition are other 23 contracts of public institutions, including the Social Assistance Agency and the Ministries of Education and Science and the one of Economy, Energy and Tourism. This became clear after the twelfth meeting of the Monitoring Committee of the Operational Programme, which was held a few days ago in Tryavna.
The main reasons for these problems, Deputy Head of the Representation for Bulgaria of the Regional Directorate of the European Commission Carsten Rasmussen said time lost in the initial years. The amount of absorption in the period 2008 – 2010, were extremely low and only after the first three years of the current programming period did you manage to apply the correct trend in the allocation of resources, he said.
Because of unappointed contractors in particularly risky situation are now the measures for tourist activities and energy efficiency in the education and health infrastructure. According to the head of the governing body of the Regional Development Denitsa Nikolova, the main reason for the delay of the project is the appealing of public procurement procedures. Although almost all of them were posted on time by the beneficiaries, the long litigation process is blocking their implementation.
The committee meeting made it clear that in order to prevent the loss of funds for the programme, it is possible to release resources from failed procedures and redirect them to other projects or to a single large infrastructure project. The second option, however, can happen only if a project is in an advanced form of preparation and application form for it can be made quickly in the European Commission. So far, experts have identified as such this building of the North Tangent of Sofia. The road is 17 km long and connects the future highway to Kalotina with the Hemus freeway. The total estimated cost of the route is about 250 million levs.
To allow construction of the North Tangent to be financed under the Regional Development Operational Programme at its meeting the Managing Authority decided to expand the scope of eligible activities. In the case it included the construction of new roads that have not been possible until now. Thus, the revised programme schedule is expected to be sent to the European Commission by the end of September and if approved the implementation of the project could begin in the fall.
Otherwise, the plans of the programme by the end of the year are to reach 100% rate of contracting the funds. Currently 96% of the budget is already in execution, and in the next two months the remaining 4 percent will be contracted. Moreover, in the remaining months of 2013 at least another 600 million levs should be actually paid.
The BANKER
