February 11, 2003

Ms. Nadezhda Sandolova, Member, National Audit Office

Ladies and gentlemen, Your Excellencies! I will be perfectly brief. Indeed, at these forums, for the fifth time now, we only have a short time for discussions but what I think matters more is that our number is growing and so are the practical implications and real actions.

I would like to mention something that I particularly appreciate about this year's report. I believe it is of superior quality and this is mainly due to the insightful and detailed analysis in the section on the economy. In this area the team of authors have included a great many specific issues and have put forth specific proposals for ways of addressing these problems. This is something that will provide an impetus to the work of everyone behind this coalition, everyone who is some kind of factor in the state and in civil society.

What would I recommend? As regards the economic section I would recommend a more detailed examination of certain areas where, unfortunately, there still appears to lack sufficient transparency and proper control. Quite a few speakers today stressed the importance of control, the importance of prevention but this hasn't been mentioned in the report. My suggestion is for the colleagues to examine more closely the field of concessions, for example. At present in Bulgaria concessioning is an extremely important activity. I think the Chair of BIBA would confirm that this could become an area with exceptionally high demand in the future. There is no supply on the part of the state and neither is there a proper management system. The incoming information and available data, even as centralized at the Council of Ministers, is quite unviable. And where there is no information, there is no basis for good governance and there arises a risk of corruption. Concessioning is a particular field where non-transparency and poor management greatly intensify corruption risks.
I'm only sketching out some of the issues.

Secondly, what happened with the control of bank privatization and the revenues from it? That's an extremely interesting topic, in my opinion. Recently the President commented on it but there hasn't been any effect. What is the legal framework for the implementation of bank privatization and who is to inspect the revenues?

I think we should not neglect business activity. That's why I will stress once again: I am extremely pleased with the work done by the economic team this year. Because it is the economic environment and processes that are generating corruption risks. I can only wish our colleagues even more thorough and productive work in the future. And when I say productive, I mean focusing on specifics and specific action.

Thank you.