Bulgaria will adapt the financial instruments for its market and will manage them more effectively in the new programming period

"Despite the great pressure of distrust regarding whether Bulgaria has the capacity to emancipate itself from external consultants in respect to financial instruments management, in the new programming period we will have available the professional expertise of the Managing Board and the Supervisory Board of the new company "Fund Manager of Financial Instruments in Bulgaria" EAD", Minister of Finance Vladislav Goranov stated at the press conference presenting the company's management. The event was also attended by Tomislav Donchev, Deputy Prime Minister responsible for European Funds and Economic Policy, the whole management of the "Fund Manager of Financial Instruments in Bulgaria" EAD, representatives of the social partners - the nationally represented employers' organisations and the Association of Banks in Bulgaria. 

Deputy Prime Minister Tomislav Donchev explained in his statement that years ago the European Commission had given an instruction to use the financial instruments and specified that it was a different kind of financing which was not a grant, but resembled credit financing in so far as the money received had to be repaid. "The difference between the credit that you could receive from a traditional bank is that when you use a financial engineering instrument both the accessibility and the interest rate are much more favourable", Donchev added. The challenge in the new programming period is the management of a much larger sum for financial engineering, being almost 10% of all the money. Besides, Bulgaria has to learn to manage by itself part of this money, because until now this has been done with the help of partners, mainly the EIF. The Deputy Prime Minister added that we had to learn to distinguish all needs of the economic sectors and the specific needs of the businesses, as well as the serious responsibility to teach everybody that would apply for that kind of financing to be familiar with it and to use it. The share of financial instruments in Bulgaria will be increasing because all experts believe that the future of EU financing, especially after 2020, is financial engineering. The new company is displaying the self-confidence of our country, which similarly to Finland, Portugal, Poland, Germany and other European countries has chosen to manage the EU funds by itself through the financial instruments mechanisms, Tomislav Donchev emphasised. 

Among the advantages in choosing the Fund of Funds mechanism for management of financial instruments under the different Operational Programmes that are targeted at the same category of beneficiaries, Minister Goranov pointed out that it would be possible to unite them; sustainability of the management will be created. According to him the most important thing, in the context of what is pending, is that the building of the expertise required at national level will begin. "This expertise will be necessary not only for setting up the Fund because of the trend imposed by Brussels to use more FI, but also because of the restrictions dictated by the fiscal framework", Goranov stated. He emphasized that "from now on, very often, when commenting on the implementation of investment projects, we will be talking about financial engineering". The other advantage is that when selecting a single Fund for all operational programmes, the procedures related to the implementation of financial instruments, such as development of an investment strategy, legal procedures, auditing, reporting and internal control, will be elaborated only once for the single Fund of Funds.