Money Matters - 1

Parliament’s anti-corruption committee has proposed a package of laws to move against organised crime, including by putting a maximum threshold of 10 000 leva on payments made in cash, especially in regard to domestic property transactions.

To prevent people trying to get around the law by breaking up such transactions into several amounts of less than 10 000 leva, such multiple-payment moves will specifically be forbidden.

Requiring all such transactions to be done through bank accounts, as the committee proposes, is intended to militate against under-declaring the value of transactions as a means of tax evasion.

The idea, which is similar to practice in other European Union countries such as France, has been welcomed by various business organisations, including the Confederation of Employers and Industrialists in Bulgaria and the Bulgarian Business Leaders Forum. Forum head Stamen Tassev has suggested that all payments emanating from elsewhere in the EU should be done through bank accounts.

The committee also has suggested that a special force be set up to police such transactions, which must be welcomed as a realistic and practical idea.

It is to be hoped that such legislation is drafted carefully and comprehensively, leaving no loopholes, and is enforced thoroughly. Any move that will serve as a blow against organised crime and that ensures that the state gets its legal share of transactions should receive swift and unanimous passage through the legislative process, and should be implemented with vigour.

Money Matters - 2

New statistics have confirmed the place of the United Kingdom as the number one investor in Bulgaria.

This should be borne in mind amid the continuing saga of the UK decision to extend the limitation of access by Bulgarians and Romanians to the UK labour market. It is understandable that Labour and Social Policy Minister Emilia Maslarova, among others, has expressed Bulgaria’s disappointment at the UK decision. Yet it is intriguing that so much attention is paid to the question of access by Bulgarians and Romanians to the UK labour market, when no survey shows that the British labour market is on the top of the list of aspirations when it comes to work-seeking by Bulgarians and Romanians, and for that matter, the UK is by no means alone among EU member states in limiting access to its workplaces. However, London’s stance continues, for whatever reason, always to attract the most attention.

It should also be borne in mind that the UK government is in a difficult position politically, given that immigration and labour market access make up the hottest issue of the day. In the face of the hysterical coverage on the issue by some sections of the UK media, and an opposition ever poised to pounce on any new development in an already vexed issue, it is understandable that the UK government is taking a cautious approach. Hence the importance of the place of the UK as the current top investor in Bulgaria.

The fact is that this assists the process of job creation and improvement of domestic incomes in this country, and thus stated Bulgarian Government policy – whatever its hopes of unrestricted labour market access throughout the EU – of encouraging Bulgarians to remain within an already challenged domestic labour market.