Sofia, January 3 (BTA) - The formerly ruling GERB party held a news conference Monday to call for urgent measures to contain inflation and slammed the government for failing to do so thus far. "Bulgarians are getting poorer and businesses are going bankrupt, and we call for urgent and adequate measures to contain this galloping inflation," GERB's Alexander Ivanov said. In his words, Prime Minister Kiril Petkov and Finance Minister Assen Vassilev have answers to give.

Inflation was 0.5 per cent in March 2021 and went up to 7.3 per cent in November. According to GERB, what follows is two-digit inflation rate in the coming months.

GERB used graphs to show the soaring prices of natural gas, fuels and consumer prices in 2021, and compare the government costs between December 2020 (7.82 billion leva) and December 2021 (9.06 billion leva). They also showed that the government used 4.64 billion from the fiscal reserve in December against an aggregate of 3.7 billion leva for the four years prior to that, and that the budget deficit increased to 4 billion leva in 2021 from 3.54 billion leva in 2020.

Of the "change" that the new government has promised to bring about, people have so far seen only "negative trends and negative records", said Ivanov.

GERB leader and former Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said that that the upward trend started in April and the ministers of the economy, finance and energy must have seen that but took no measures.

He also said that the governmente kept its 9 billion leva cost in December 2021 secret from the public.

Bulgaria is still without a budget for 2022 and without an approved National Recovery and Resilience Plan, he added.

Delyan Dobrev, a former GERB energy minister, said there are rumours that the head of the energy regulator will be replaced with a nominee of the Continue the Change party before the end of January and that will make the independent regulator "politically coloured".

He also brought up the issue of the leak to the public of the gas supply contract with Azerbaijan and said that the country's energy diversification is now threatened.

Gas supplier Bulgargaz has also complained about the leak of confidential clauses in the contract with Azerbaijan and referred the matter to the State Agency for National Security.

Borissov added that the contract was leaked after Bulgargaz made it available to the government and urged the Prime Minister to ask the National Security Agency to find the culprit. LN///