Top stories in today's papers
Updated on: 10.02.2009, 10:30
Published on: 10.02.2009, 10:23
The Trud daily
"DSB and SDS demand seventh vote against the authority", "Trud" announces. The two parties are starting consultations with the other powers from the opposition. This was announced yesterday by the leaders of DSB and SDS Ivan Kostov and Martin Dimitrov. The vote will be the on all the policies of the authority. The "blue parties" even demand it by the end of the week. The motives of the two parties are the failure with the European funds, corruption, servile behavior towards Russia, lack of measures against the financial crisis. It is expected that BND and independent deputies will join.
"A slowdown of the economy is expected", "Trud" informs. Slower economic growth, low inflation, decrease of foreign investment and increase of unemployment is expected by the Center for economic development (CED) this year. "A growth of 4% would be possible, but is problematic", Georgi Prohaski, co-chair of CED, announced yesterday on a press conference. According to him, unemployment will probably not exceed 10% given 6% in 2008. Inflation will be minimal - 4% at most, as there is a danger of deflation, which is bad for business, which has invested and planned income for the return of investment, Prohaski added.
"A better report is not a sleeping pill", is the heading of the interview in "Trud" with Gergana Grancharova, European Affairs Minister. She says: "What we changed in the last month radically, was the tone of communication with the EC. Therefore I expect the tone of the report to reflect this change. By the way, the first indications for that came in the beginning of December, during the expert mission. This report will not be an assessment of the actions, but a picture of the facts in the justice and internal affairs systems. I am waiting for it with curiosity, but not as a "report vanity", but because I insist that the possible good assessments are used as a fuel, not as a sleeping pill. We have already marked the measures from the next schedule in the summer, we know what we are trying to achieve - a durable and convincing change in the systems. If this becomes reality, its mentioning in a report will be just a formality.
The 24 chasa daily
"230 million levs went to the firms", "24 chasa pointed out. By the end of March all 500 million levs from the Bulgarian development bank (BDB), planned for financing of small and medium enterprises, must reach them, Sergey Stanishev said yesterday. He met Finance Minister Plamen Oresharski and representatives of BDB and the Bulgarian banks association. These funds were given by the state for stimulation of business and reduction of the effects of the crisis. 230 million of the money has already been agreed on. It will be given as credit lines of 12 commercial banks.
The Sega daily
"The authority might do it with the EU and without the EU ", "Sega" comments. The ruling coalition, however, has to think over the fact that only in Bulgaria trust towards the EU is higher, than towards the regional and local authorities. "This shows that the public opinion in the country has not been influenced negatively by the unpopular measures of the European Commission towards Bulgaria", analyzers in Brussels think. How risky it is for Bulgaria to become involved in euro-skepticism, is shown by the simple comparison of data from the last Eurobarometer, published two weeks ago. Only 15% of Bulgarians say they trust their government, while 51% trust the EC. Even worse is the comparison between peoples' trust in the Bulgarian and European Parliament - 8% in the former and 57% in the latter case. The conclusion is that the authority can cope without the EU, but society cannot.