Bulgaria's Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) has presented an increased budget of 457.2 million leva for the judiciary year 2008 to the parliamentary legal committee on November 8 2007.

The Finance Ministry allocated 385 million leva into its budget bill 2008 as it has factored in that the judiciary would have 70 million leva in revenues next year.

Under the Bulgarian constitution, the Judiciary should have an independent budget, but until now, the Council of Ministers and Parliament have seriously cut financial aspirations of the SJC, mediapool.bg said.

This year around, there were discrepancies between the JSC and Finance Ministry budget calculations in most expenditures in the budget.
While the judiciary insisted that the JSC get a 250 million leva budget, the Cabinet allotted only 213 million. The higher sum requested by the JSC stemmed from the 36.8 per cent wage hike expected to take place next year. The Cabinet foresaw a milder salary hike of 17 per cent.

The JSC also envisaged 75.6 million leva for administrative expenses whereas the Cabinet only foresaw 56.9 million leva.
The capital expenditures item should feature 28.8 million leva, according to the JSC. The finance ministry wanted to assign 10 million leva only.