Bulgarian governments have mostly failed in achieving set goals through the programmes they have initiated in the past 10 years, economists from the Institute for Market Economics (IME) said at a news conference titled The Successes and Failures of Bulgarian Governments 1998/2007 on December 16 2008.

IME presented statistics based on the review of 433 reports, which are available on the National Audit Office (NAO) website. The summary of their finds reveals 99 successful initiatives, 193 failures and 141 unclassified. The main criteria used by NAO was whether the allotted budgets have been utilised in a lawful, effective and economical way. The Audit Office is not entitled to comment on specific political decisions but rather examines the quality of their execution, IME said.

According to the available data, the 433 reports examined the spending of 47 billion leva, out of which 20 billion were accounted to the programmes that failed to reach any significant goals, 16.5 billion went to the realisation of the successful programmes, and 10.5 billion financed the unclassified initiatives.

Petar Ganev, an economist from IME, said that as unclassified were regarded cases that were nether that successful, nor unsuccessful and played the role of a buffer. Ganev also said that government failures reached their peak in 2005, which was an election year. The change of administration and ruling power could possibly affect motivation and sense of responsibility, Ganev said.

As a clear example of a failure, Ganev pointed out the European Union's human resource development operational programme, managed by the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy. From 2004 to 2006, some 357 million leva were spent, which resulted in 801 people getting permanently employed, out of total 300000 unemployed Bulgarians during that time.

Another example of failure Ganev discussed was the project for small and medium-sized businesses of the Ministry of Economy and Energy and the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works. The project was meant to help the modernisation of businesses across the country. After the allotted seven million euro, only 0.03 per cent of small and middle businesses seemed to have been encouraged. The NAO' report from 2002 to 2005 uncovered fund mismanagement, poor control mechanisms, as well as needless purchasing of old equipment on prices close to brand-new machinery.

Ganev said that the grand conclusion to be drawn from the NAO's reports was that Bulgarian governments were not effective in regards of achieving concrete results. The only solution could be that the state should engage in fewer initiatives and instead give way to the private sector to participate in more projects.

The state should provide the secure conditions for the business to flourish, not to try to supervise it and direct it, the panellists said.

As an effective spending and therefore regarded as a successful "case" was given the work of the Bulgarian Red Cross for 2006. A subsidy of close to two million leva had been fully put to use by the end of that year through the various social programmes this NGO initiated.

Other participants in the panel included Svetla Kostadinova and Zornitsa Manolova.