Half of the budget surplus, which some expect to reach six billion leva by the end of 2008, was what Labour and Social Policy Minister Emilia Maslarova asked to be allocated for spending in the social sector.

Maslarova made the statement on September 1 2008, while presenting a report on the ministry's work over the past three years and on setting the ministry's priorities in 2009, when Bulgaria is to have its general parliamentary elections.

According to Maslarova, the budget surplus should be used to improve the situation in Bulgaria's educational and healthcare sectors.

Pensions would also be updated, Maslarova said, as quoted by Dnevnik daily, and noted that the exact amount was still under discussion. She promised that the spending would be done in the most transparent way, Dnevnik reported.

In the end of August 2008, after meeting Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) leaders, Confederation of Independent Trade Unions in Bulgaria president Zhelyazko Hristov announced that more than a billion leva from the budget surplus would be used for social policies, especially for an increase in pensions in October 2008 and January 2009.

On September 1, National Movement for Stability and Progress (NMSP) deputy leader Milen Velchev told private broadcaster bTV that nearly three billion leva of the surplus would be allocated by the end of 2008. NMSP’s stance was that half of the surplus, in 2008 and in general, should be allocated for the silver fund in favour of the pension system. However, BSP and the third party in the ruling coalition, Movement for Rights and Freedoms, did not support the idea.

As for projections for 2009, Maslarova expected the unemployment rate to be 5.5 per cent, as opposed to the current rate of 5.97 per cent. By the end of the Cabinet’s mandate, pensions should be twice as large as in 2005.

Another ideas was to extend maternity leave from the current 315 days to 410 days, which would make Bulgaria the country providing the longest maternity leave in the European Union.

The same applied to the amount of the minimum salary, which currently is set at 240 leva for 2009.

In 2009, the guaranteed minimum in social aid would be 65 leva a month, Maslarova promised. Thus, poor Bulgarians would have more than two leva daily, instead of 1.76 leva, which was the poverty line fixed by the World Bank.