On February 8 Sofia deputy mayor for finance Minko Gerdjikov presented the municipality's draft budget for 2008 to the public, the press centre of Sofia municiplaity said.

„The municipality's main priorities for 2008 are to provide money to develop projects, which will be implemented with EU funds, to provide money for eco projects, to solve traffic problems, to widen the range and improve the quality of social services,“ Gerdjikov said.

“Sofia's administration will rely on bearable taxes everyone can pay, instead of high taxes that citizens cannot pay,” Gerdjikov said.

Gerdjikov announced that in 2008 the municipality would have to add an additional 18 million leva to the 18 million granted to schools in the municipality by the state, Bulgarian news agency BTA said. He said that in 2007, the state had granted 32 million leva to Sofia's municipal schools and even this sum had not been enough, let alone the 18 million granted for 2008.

The municipality's education expenditures amount to 180 million leva, or 20.62 per cent of its total budget, for salaries for teachers at the schools, kindergartens and creches. Gerdjikov said that although teachers' salaries had to be raised with 34 per cent in 2008, the municipal budget for this expense had been raised with only 14 per cent.

The construction of the second diameter of the Sofia metro, which will lead from the Nadezhda residential district to the National Palace of Culture (NDK), would start in mid 2008, he said.

What had been referred to local media as "suspiciously large budgets" for the construction of new kindergartens, was defended with the explanation that infrastructure had to be build around the kindergartens, as well as gyms attached to the kindergarten buildings, mediapool.bg said.