There were no serious economic threats for the financial and macroeconomic stability of Bulgaria, but rather political ones, a macroeconomic stability discussion, organised by the Open Society foundation, was told by experts, as quoted by mediapool.bg on October 22.
The economy was developing well, the private sector was progressing considerably and the government and the politicians were the only factors that could turn the positive trends into negative ones, said Georgi Angelov, senior economic expert with Open Society. Debt level increase and budget deficit, caused by government spending surpassing the revenue, could lead to economic difficulties, he said.
A hindrance to even faster economic growth in Bulgaria was the governments policy to prioritise on repaying the foreign debt and accumulating reserves, said Luchezar Bogdanov from independent analytical company Industry Watch. In a long-term scenario, emigration would turn out to be a major problem with the current lack of reforms, he said. If Bulgaria was to remain a bad place to live, people, and especially the better qualified among them, would leave the country. In such a scenario no investment in physical labour force could compensate the lack of human capital, of innovations, of creativity, of talent and of will to work, Bogdanov said.
The experts participating in the forum pointed out the need for reforms in problematic sectors, like education, healthcare, administration, defence and others. The public sector as a whole was inefficient and the people employed in it were not prepared to accept reforms, as was the case with Bulgarian teachers that were currently on strike only to ask for higher wages.
There was a record-high level of real incomes in Bulgaria at the moment, with this indicator being better than the peak of 1989, said Georgi Ganev of the Bulgarian Macroeconomic Association, as quoted by mediapool.bg. In the last several years, the risk-return ratio in Bulgaria was much more tempting than the average for the remaining part of Europe and the world, Ganev said.
