2024-07-03 07:16:14
There is no mechanism by which excess funds can be allocated to something else
Bulgaria will most likely return to the European Commission BGN 159.4 million allocated under the National Plan for Recovery and Sustainability. They were intended for the second stage of the procedure “Support for sustainable energy renovation of the residential building stock”. According to it, the candidates
have to pay 20% of the costs,
and the remaining 80% are on plan.
Under this procedure, BGN 282.4 million were secured, but by the deadline, only 307 projects with a total value of BGN 123 million had applied.
The remainder of 159.4 million cannot be used for another procedure, because the plan lacks a scheduled mechanism for redistributing the remaining free financial resource, it is evident from the answers of the regional ministry to questions of “24 hours”.
This could have been done when the Recovery and Resilience Plan was negotiated, but it did not happen.
The only stipulation that they make from the Ministry of Regional Planning and Development is that the amount of BGN 159.4 million may not be quite accurate, because the projects
are still being considered by an evaluation committee
and it is quite possible that the remainder may be greater or less.
The lack of interest in remediation with an additional payment of 20% of the costs means returning BGN 159 million to the EC.
The application deadline for this procedure expired on March 28, after being extended twice to accommodate as many applicants as possible. The evaluation started in April but is not yet fully completed and the approved projects have not been published.
This
it would not be the first time that funds under the plan could not be disbursed
Last year, an entire procedure – for the construction of an intermodal terminal in Ruse for BGN 47 million – was dropped, as no candidates appeared at all.
On the other hand, in the first stage of the same procedure for energy efficiency of the housing stock, in which the EC provides 100% of the funds, projects applied for nearly 4 times more funds than available. The procedure provided for the allocation of 1.1 billion BGN for rehabilitation, and more than 3,000 blocks applied for a total of BGN 3.9 billion.
Then the commission in the Ministry of Land Development approved 756 blocks. By the end of June, according to the responses of the regional ministry, 38 contracts with municipalities were concluded with a total value of BGN 51 million.
The realization of these projects can be started already this summer, as long as the municipalities conduct the public procurement for the selection of companies on time. The entire procedure should be completed by the end of 2026.
On the other hand, the entire second payment under the NPVU of 653 million euros is in question if the law on personal bankruptcy is not adopted within 6 months and the justice and energy reforms are not made.
The request for this second tranche was sent by Bulgaria to the EC at the beginning of October this year, but since then it has been at the evaluation stage and no payment has been made. Recently, the Acting Minister of Finance Lyudmila Petkova said that the adoption of 4 laws separates us from the tranche. If the Parliament does not vote them, the European Commission
has the right to reduce the payment amount
Petkova made this clarification in connection with a parliamentary question about the impact of these payments on the state budget. The reason – the second and even the third tranche of the NPVU, which is 711 million euros, are set as revenue in this year’s budget, and there is a great danger that if we do not receive them, this will affect the deficit. The third tranche has not been requested at all so far, as the fulfillment of the conditions for it depends on investment measures, which are also delayed.