By April 1, state officials and certain other individuals were required to submit 2017 property and income e-declarations. While many people criticized the new requirement for the anti-corruption activists to submit e-declarations, members of supervisory boards at SOEs were also required to submit such declarations in 2018.
Privatization, however, is not only a sale of government-owned properties: It is first and foremost a process of separating the government from intervention in many other areas, not just the economy. Georgia is a positive example, and an almost unique exception in this respect.
Similar to other CEE economies, privatization in Bulgaria did not start with the 1989–1990 transition period. The same applied to other market reforms, too, as the dominant view among policymakers at that time was that Bulgaria should undertake gradual changes to minimize social suffering.
Milton Friedman once remarked that “you must separate out being pro-market from being pro-business”, and continued: “the two greatest enemies of the free enterprise system, in my opinion, have been on the one hand my fellow intellectuals, and on the other hand, the big businessmen – for opposite reasons”.
The Law and Justice Party (PiS) has been using state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to push for changes in the justice system that are detrimental to rule of law, economic growth, and civil liberties. At the same time, SOEs saved the Polish Mining Group (PGG) from bankruptcy.
State-owned enterprises (SOEs) are a very important part of the Bulgarian economy. Their revenue in 2015 equals 13% of GDP, but even that number underestimates their economic impact. The data show that the financial position of SOEs as a whole has remained bad in recent years.
Apart of the geographic fact and the benefit the country derives from proximity to the German economy, and the historical traditions of the First Republic, the Czech Republic still shares more with Slovakia and Hungary than it does with France and Denmark.
Riverside County decided to solve library problems by transferring a part of the operations it was in charge of. Therefore, it offered a new contract in a competition open to both public and private bidders.
One of the results of privatization was a noticeable increase in the quality of the services and a more effective allocation of the costs.
On March 9, 2012 Simeon Djankov, Bulgarian Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister announced that Bulgaria will repay its foreign debt using three sources of income. According to Sofia News Agency novinite.com these sources include “privatization of unnecessary State assets, short-term government securities, and mid-term 5 or 7-year Euro bonds in equal shares“. The proposal caused concerns expressed by Martin Dimitrov, member of the right-wing Blue Coalition. More about government’s proposal here.
