What the Bulgarian economy will look like in 2020? What are its prospects for development in the next 10 years? What are the objectives our country should strive to achieve?
These are some of the questions that the Economic and Social Council (ESC) seeks to answer with its analysis and proposals made in the opinion entitled “Strategic priorities of the Bulgarian economy in the context of Europe 2020 Strategy”. It was elaborated on the proposal of the President of the Republic of Bulgaria and adopted at a Plenary Session of the Council on 30th September 2010.
One of the main conclusions on which is based the analysis and proposals of the ESC is that the twenty-year transition toward a functioning market economy did not lead to effective structural reforms in the economy and the related fields. The perspective for long-term sustainable development is threatened by the inherited and newly created fundamental structural problems of the economy, the deepening imbalances and strong detents of the economic growth. They are expressed most clearly in an economic recession and lead to low competitiveness, continuous and acute social disturbances, the opinion says.
There is lack of continuity in the management at political level, also the ESC says. In accordance with the ESC, monitoring of the implementation and coherence between the national strategies and policies is not fulfilled, continuity and overbuilding of objectives and measures is lacking. The Council determines that the institutions in our country have generated over 163 major strategic documents, programs and plans, among which there is no systematical connection. Sufficient monitoring is not applied over their implementation and update if needed, the reasons for their failure is not analysed as well as possible optimization in the following periods.
The Council considers that the economic growth generated over the past 13 years is at the expense of “unhealthy” growth, low quality of foreign direct investments, wrong energy policy, high and increasing company debt and retention of imbalances related to the limited purchasing power of the population.
