Ministry of Transport, Information Technology and Communications

Approximately 100 million lev must be paid monthly to achieve 100% implementation under Operational Program "Transport". This was stated today during the press conference presenting the team and the priorities of the caretaker Minister of Transport, Information Technology and Communications, Nikolina Anglekova. According to her, the goal is feasible, but maximum efforts on behalf of builders and beneficiaries are needed in the coming months. Currently under OP "Transport" more than 2.5 billion. Lev have been repaid, which is over 63% of the program budget. Approximately 1.5 billion lev must be paid by the end of 2015 in order to achieve 100% completion.

MTITC’s team will include two Deputy Ministers. Kamen Spasov will be in charge of Information Technology and Communications and Georgi Todorov retains his post as a Deputy Minister and will be responsible for Transport. "To achieve the objectives I will rely on the professionalism and performance of my team", said Nikolina Angelkova. The team has set ten days to get into details on key issues from their portfolios at the Ministry and to prepare an action plan to solve them. Among the main priorities is to work on transport projects with European funding, e-Governance and the state of companies and enterprises of the transport system.

"My first major task is to prevent loss of funds under Operational Program "Transport " by the end of 2014", said Minister Nikolina Angelkova. In Accordance with the EC rules, 82 million euros should be recovered by the end of 2014. This will amount a total of nearly 1 billion euros that are EU funding only. At this stage, the forecast of the Managing body of the program is that the amount will be exceeded and there is no danger of losing funds under the Operational Program "Transport" by the end of 2014.

"As of Monday we are launching emergency on-site inspections of all high-risk projects to be implemented under the Operational Program" Transport", said Minister Angelkova. The railway lines "Septemvri - Plovdiv" and "Parvomai - Svilengrad", whose construction is estimated at 300 million euros, will be inspected. "Maritza" and "Struma" highways will also be subject to inspections, with a total indicative value of 150 million euros.

"We are in high construction season and the next two months will be a milestone for the overall implementation of the program", Nikolina Angelkova added. There are no delayed payments; OP "Transport" is the only operational program with direct payments to the contractors. Currently all money transferred to our major beneficiaries NRIC and RIA has reached the builders and the amounts for RIA are just over 1 billion lev and for NRIC - over 472 million lev. 

The other main priority in the work on European projects will be the preparation and approval of the new OP "Transport and Transport Infrastructure" 2014 – 2020. At present the list with proposed projects exceeds the available financial resources. Therefore careful prioritization based on technical readiness is needed, explained Minister Angelkova. The Ministry has already received the first official comments by the European Commission and the revised version of the program will be sent to Brussels in 20 days. We will be actively working on the Connecting Europe Facility under which the country can be allocated 350 million euros in the next three years.

A preliminary audit report by the Audit of EU Funds was obtained, and its findings could lead to 24 million lev financial corrections under OP "Transport". "This means that urgent measures are to be taken so as to minimize the findings or make sure that they can be fully eliminated", said Minister Angelkova. Regardless of the final decision, the money will not be lost and will be transferred to other projects. 

The preparation of the e-Government Act is on-going. "We maintain dialogue with all stakeholders in the field of ICT to speed up the process of introducing e-governance", said Nikolina Angelkova. A detailed analysis of current projects is to be prepared to assess which ones can be completed and commissioned in the coming months. 

"We continue the active dialogue with BDZ creditors and we will address the most pressing problems in the sector", said the minister. She has already held meetings with the management of "Holding Bulgarian State Railways" EAD and the National Railway Infrastructure Company.

Minister Angelkova commented on the case of the detained employees at the State Automobile Inspectorate in Veliko Tarnovo. An internal audit was ordered, but according to preliminary information they are to be released. "We will not tolerate illegal activities in the transport system and we rely on the public and the media to report any such case”, Nikolina Angelkova stressed out.