Deputy Prime Minister Donchev: Bulgaria may receive the second and third payment under the Recovery and Sustainability Plan this year
We are increasing the budgets for 4 investments by nearly half a billion leva – for air medical assistance, modernization of psychiatric care, the metro and for railway rolling stock, Donchev also said
After three months of efforts and two months of negotiations with the EC, there are all the prerequisites for Bulgaria to resubmit a request for a second payment under the Recovery and Sustainability Plan and receive the funds within this year. I have the ambition to have a third payment, which will be sent and received again by the end of 2025. There are seven payments left, and time is drastically short, it will be necessary to group payments – three or four of them in one request, in order to try to secure all the funds under the Plan. This was stated by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Innovation and Growth Tomislav Donchev at a briefing today at the Council of Ministers on the amendment of the Recovery and Sustainability Plan and the additional funding under REPowerEU.
Donchev emphasized that the process of reorganization of investments from the NRSP continues. There are 11 projects that will not be dropped, but will be reduced financially, since there is no time to implement the investments in their full volume. He gave as examples the program for youth centers, for accelerating economic recovery and transformation through scientific research, as well as the program for the development of industrial zones and parks.
At the same time, however, there is an increase in the budget of some of the investments, which is worth a total of 485 million leva. Among them are the projects for railway rolling stock - from 665.9 million leva to 952.5 million leva, for line number 3 of the Sofia metro - from 217 million leva to 282 million leva. BGN, for 8 new metro trains – 84 million BGN additionally, for the modernization of psychiatric care – from 23.7 million BGN to 36.4 million BGN and for the creation of a system for indicating emergency medical assistance by air – from 99.3 million BGN to 136 million BGN.
The Deputy Prime Minister announced another piece of good news that the government sent the REPowerEU chapter, which will provide our country with access to additional funding in the amount of over 480 million.
In conclusion, he emphasized that compared to the beginning of the year, payments in the country have almost doubled.