Bulgaria's Labour and Social Policy Minister Emilia Maslarova says that the period in which unemployment benefits will be paid will be cut from 12 to six months and will be used for training for job-seekers.

Maslarova was speaking on October 11 2008 in Plovdiv at a national conference entitled Elderly People - Life with a Future, organised by her ministry, the Hasumi International Research Foundation and the Japanese embassy.

According to a report by Bulgarian National Television (BNT), Maslarova said that the six months of unemployment benefits would be used for training and retraining programmes.

She said that her ministry was considering how to apply the experience of some European countries where aid to people younger than 35 was paid only on condition that they underwent training.

The change would take effect from January 1 2009. She did not expect that it would provoke protests, BNT reported Maslarova as saying.

Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev said that changes to Bulgaria's demographics, meaning the ageing of its population, called for a more result-orientated state policy that would guarantee elderly people worthwhile lives.

This policy should not be confined to the amounts paid as pensions, Stanishev said. Many people could continue to be involved in and contribute to the country in their post-retirement years.

Bulgarian news agency Focus quoted Maslarova as telling the conference that her ministry was working with pensioners' associations to stimulate the involvement in people of retirement age in the employment market for a longer time.

This could mean raising the retirement age.

She noted that projections were that by 2050, pensioners would make up 35 per cent of Bulgaria's population. Currently, there were about 2 230 000 pensioners.