Bulgarian state railways BDZ needed 500 million euro in each of the next five years to undergo full rehabilitation, Bulgarian Transport Minister Petar Moutafchiev said on March 17, as quoted by BTA.

The minister took part in a discussion dedicated to traffic safety at BDZ, organised by several national media in the aftermath of the Sofia-Kardam incident.

The transport ministry has already endorsed a rehabilitation plan for the Bulgarian State Railways (BDZ). The plan, through 2017, will be financed with a 120 million euro bond. According to it, the state subsidy for the holding company would go up by 40 per cent compared to previous years. Last year, the subsidy reached 100 million leva.

One idea for BDZ rehabilitation, Moutafchiev said, saw the government allocating funds from the budget surplus through 2013 to allow trains raise their average speed from 87 km/h to 130 km/h.

The discussion was attended by BDZ's new chief executive Hristo Monov, the entire BDZ management, 14 MPs and journalists.

Bulgaria's cabinet fired six top managers last week, including chief executive Oleg Petkov, for not ensuring that passenger safety standards were observed properly, causing the death of nine people on the Sofia-Kardam train on February 28.

The fire started at night in a couchette carriage, which had 35 people in it at the time, and then spread to a sleeping coach with 27 people. It lasted about 15 minutes but it was enough for nine people to lose their lives in the flames. Investigators are working on three main possible reasons for the fire: terrorist attack, accident and criminal misconduct. So far no one had assumed any kind of responsibility for the incident.