Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borissov praised on November 3 the work of his Cabinet in the first 100 days of its term, returning to the familiar refrain of the difficult inheritance from the previous government.

Speaking at the fourth annual meeting of Government and business organised by Kapital weekly and the Confederation of Employers and Industrialists in Bulgaria, Borissov said that it was the kind of "inheritance one cannot simply stop talking about".

"You are all businesspeople here and you know what it is like to buy a debt-ridden company. The state, when we took over, was ridden by debts in every single area," Borissov said.

He emphasised the Cabinet's success in balancing the books and recording a 52 million leva Budget surplus in October, saying it would give foreign investors renewed confidence in the financial stability of the country.

On energy projects, Borissov criticised the poor reasoning for Bulgaria's projects with Russia, saying that the Cabinet did not commit to or pull out of them because it was not yet done with analysing costs and benefits.

Asked about whether his Government would pursue a more active line on judiciary reforms, Borissov said that the latest row on alleged conflict of interest in the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) had a sanitising effect. "The reforms should come from within the system. Any political interference leads to an SJC like the current one," he said.

On cutting down the share of the grey economy, Borissov's two proposed solutions were a call for businesses to take a more active role in reporting irregularities to the prosecutor's office and making data available across Government agencies to track down irregularities, as has already been done by linking the databases of the National Revenue Agency and the Customs Agency.