Budget Committee Gives Bulgaria Gov't Green Light for New Borrowing
Wednesday, 19 November 2014
The Budget and Finance Committee at Bulgaria's Parliament has given the government a mandate to start talks over a fresh foreign borrowing of up to 3 billion levs.
The remaining 1.5 billion levs, out of 4.5 billion levs that the cabinet will additionally need for a planned budget update, are to be raised by issuing government securities on the domestic market.
Bulgaria's recently appointed Council of Ministers is now allowed to negotiate with foreign banks virtually before any vote whether to overhaul the 2014 budget has taken place.
The Committee's decision to rush through the procedure is to allow more time for negotiations, Petar Chobanov, former Finance Minister and currenly a lawmaker, is quoted by the website Dnevnik.bg as saying.
On Monday the Finance Ministry reported it had already received offers for a bridge loan worth 2.54 billion levs (1.3 billion euros) from certain banks.