Sofia municipality proposed a plann to build 10 to 15 modular kindergartens in 2008, Sofia mayor and Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) leader Boiko Borissov announced on February 4. Borissov made his announcement on the same day the municipal website for online kindergarten registration crashed when it was launch, stirring up angry reactions from thousands of parents, mediapool.bg said.

Every year there was a shortage of 3000 places in Sofia's kindergartens, mediapool.bg said.

Accused of spending too much money inefficiently, as was the case with the online registrations system for kindergartens, Borissov said he would give up his initial plans to construct kindergartens.

The 2008 budget of Sofia's municipality included funding for the construction of seven kindergartens. The funding in this year's budget was 50 per cent of the necessary funding, assumed was that the rest would be included in the 2009 budget. But the total funding seemed suspiciously high, mediapool.bg said.

A mediapool check with construction companies showed considerable discrepancies between market prices and what was included in the Sofia municipal budget, mediapool.bg said. According to the Sofia municipal budget, four of the new kindergartens would cost four million leva each and the remaining three would cost three million leva each. An elementary school with a kindergarten that was going to be build in Sofia's Bousmantsi residential area was planned to cost 1.2 million leva. Sofia municipality also planned to spend 1.5 million leva on the repair of kindergartens.

Construction companies told mediapool that construction of 1 sq m residential floorspace costs between 350 and 400 euro, excluding the price of the land. In the case of the kindergartens, the land is supposed to be owned by the municipality. Based on this, the price for a 1000 sq m kindergarten should be about 400 000 euro (800 000 leva). The municipality, however, in its budget included a sum that was five times higher, mediapool.bg said.

Even the budget for repair of kindergartens was twice that of the quoted costs of constructing a new kindergarten.

Doubts about Sofia's inefficient spending of public funding became even stronger when the Sofia plans were compared to those of Plovdiv. The Plovdiv municipality had announced a public procurement for the construction of a 523 sq m kindergarten for a maximum of 600 000 leva.

On February 4, Borissov announced his back-up plan for the kindergarten issue, but it didn't look much cheaper, mediapool said.

Borissov said that until February 28, interested parties could submit offers for the construction of modular kindergartens. According to Borissov, these should cost between one and three million leva, which still considerably exceeded the estimated market prices for construction, mediapool.bg said. Chairman of the Sofia municipal council Andrei Ivanov, of Borissov's GERB party, said that an Austrian company had shown interest in the construction of modular kindergartens.