The state will finance 234 municipalities in water and road infrastructure repair projects

The Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works will fund the municipalities in a targeted manner according to objective criteria. For this purpose, BGN 418 million will be provided through the restructuring of the department's budget for 2022. 234 municipalities will receive funding for 297 projects for roads, streets and water supply. The funds will reach over 6.4 million Bulgarians according to national statistics, the regional ministry reports.

The final list of projects was compiled by the experts in the Ministry of Planning and Development, who worked together with the experts from the National Association of Municipalities in the Republic of Bulgaria (NSORB). The ranked sites are from all the requests submitted by the mayors to the Ministry of Finance since February and to the Ministry of Finance in recent days. The criteria for the projects to cover the maximum number of municipalities and population and to have suitable design and technical documentation, including a valid construction permit, have been met. The requirement for a selected contractor after procedures under the Public Procurement Act has been dropped.

From Monday, the Ministry of regional development and public works will send letters to the municipalities that have not submitted all the necessary documents and have not submitted evidence for their projects, such as: complete design and technical information for the sites, valid building permits, declaration of lack of double financing, etc. The documents will be collected with the assistance of NSORB.

The total value of all the projects on the list is over BGN 827 million. This year, the municipalities will receive 50% of the necessary funding for each site. This condition was agreed with the association of municipalities. The reason is that some projects will not have physical time to be completed by the end of 2022, as local administrations will still be conducting PPA procedures.

The list includes only objects that, according to the Law on Public Finances, can be financed from the budget of the Ministry of regional development and public works.

"I believe that the next governments will ensure continuity of our policy for targeted financing of municipalities on a competitive basis according to objective criteria. This is the first step towards financial decentralization of the Bulgarian municipalities. We ended the practice of giving out PMS funds without criteria or based on political bias. We worked in close cooperation with the experts from NSROB, and I hope that this will be a model for policy towards the local government in the future as well," commented Deputy Prime Minister in resignation Grozdan Karadjov.