Three types of the vignette road-toll fees will most likely be paid starting next year, according to Finance Minister Plamen Oresharski, who spoke in Parliament on July 28.

A new road toll may be introduced for second-class and third-class roads. For vignettes and toll-taxes on highways operating under concession, separately paid contracts is another idea that came from Oresharski. Another option is for the state to re-introduce the road tax, which was abolished in 2005.

On June 5, Regional and Public Works Minister Assen Gagauzov first mentioned that the vignettes might be abolished as of 2007. The reason for this action, according to Gagauzov, was that the vignettes failed to meet revenue expectations. The old way, when all drivers had to pay a road tax, proved to have collected more money than the vignette system.

There had to be another way to tax drivers using a means different than the vignettes, Gagauzov said.

The vignette stickers are pre-payable for all light and heavy vehicles on Bulgaria’s road network. Failure to hold a sticker of either of daily, weekly, monthly or annual validity is subject to fines of 100 to 200 leva. Gagauzov said that the abolishment of the vignettes was needed also because Bulgaria could not persuade the European Union that drivers in Bulgaria should pay for vignettes and for toll fees at the same time.

The vignettes were initially thought to be paid for vehicular use of the national road network and the toll fees to be paid for the highways under concession.

The abolishment of the vignettes brings up another question: the compensation of the companies contracted by the state to print and sell the vignettes stickers. Such companies have five-year-long contracts with the state that are due to expire in 2010. With the abolishment of the vignettes, it is expected that they seek a form of compensation. At present, vignettes are printed in the printing houses of Bulgarian National Bank and Demax. The distribution was given to Bulgarian Posts and the private consortium DZI-Trans.

Proof of the low income from the vignette system was presented on May 3 when the state-owned Roads Executive Agency published a report saying that the state had collected 101 million leva from the sale of vignettes since the beginning of 2006, against a target of 169 million leva for the same period in 2005. The agency’s executive director Vesselin Georgiev said that he was worried about the low figure, as the period of active sales had already passed.

“This money will be sufficient to repair as little as 50 to 100km of roads and the state is looking for other sources of funding for such works,” Georgiev said. He compared the price of the vignette for trucks in Bulgaria and Romania, 320 euro and 960 euro, respectively. Another comparison Georgiev gave was Austria, which, according to him, collects 1.5 million euro in road fees annually. Georgiev said that 285 million leva were needed for repairs of roads damaged by the floods in 2005 and 2006.