“We are at a match without a referee. The referee is gone. Imagine the business opposite with a big rifle, with a big bazooka. And imagine us - the workers' representatives, with a small slingshot. Yesterday, at a commission, they took away our slingshot and told us: “Go and get along with the bazooka“. And they expect us to have, how should I say, some success”. He commented on this in the show “Face to Face” on bTV Lyuboslav Kostov, chief economist of the Confederation of Bulgarian Trade Unions, regarding the budget that should be adopted tomorrow in parliament.
„A formal victory for business. Even the match is not being played at the moment“, he said.
„We cannot agree on any increase. Or if we do agree, it will be by 10-20 euros and it certainly will not be the increase that the current mechanism provided. I am just giving an example - according to the current formula on January 1, the minimum wage should have been 700 euros, if they had not removed this mechanism yesterday“, pointed out Lyuboslav Kostov.
„So how much it will be next year, we have yet to find out. At the moment, there is no one in the country who can answer this question. "How much will the minimum wage be in 5 months," he specified.
"The minimum wage is in paragraph 44 of the Budget Act, which repeals Article 244, line 2 of the Labor Code", the economist said.
"Inflation is the best friend of every finance minister. And as we know, inflation is not currently 4.2%. Just for reference, Galab Donov is working with inflation of 4.2% in the budget, which will be adopted tomorrow. According to official data from the National Statistical Institute, inflation is already at 7%. By the end of the year, depending on what happens with the war in Iran, there are many factors, but it could most likely be even more," Kostov commented.
"Next week we will present the cost of living, but what we have as data for the small basket, we have huge differences between retail prices and wholesale prices — from 30% to 130%", he noted.
According to him, cheese in Bulgaria is 125% of the price of average European cheese.