On March 15, 2012 the Permanent Representative of the World Bank in Bulgaria - Marcus Repnik, Peter Harrold - Regional Director of the World Bank for Central Europe and the Baltic countries and Vladimir Mihailovski - Permanent Representative for Bulgaria of the International Finance Corporation, part of the World Bank, met with the Committee on European Affairs and Oversight of the European Funds (CEAOEF) and with the Budget and Finance Committee.

CEAOEF Chairwoman - Ms. Monika Panayotova expressed her satisfaction that meetings in such format have become a good tradition of the National Assembly. In this connection, she reminded about the joint meeting, which was held on April 6, 2011, of both Parliamentary committees with the World Bank in Bulgaria. During the meeting potential areas of cooperation (in the sectors of education, healthcare, administrative reform, agriculture, transport and infrastructure) were discussed and the priorities of the World Bank's partnership strategy with Bulgaria until 2014 were outlined. Ms. Panayotova reported the progress achieved during the last year in setting up the areas of cooperation. The latter were incorporated in the Memorandum of Understanding between the Government of Bulgaria and the World Bank on Partnership and Support in the Implementation of the EU Structural Instruments, signed on January 22, 2012 - namely road sector, environment (including water sector), railway industry, innovation, business regulatory environment and Roma inclusion. In addition, Ms. Panayotova welcomed the reached agreement to finance from the European funds the provided expert support, which would not create additional burden on the national budget.
Ms. Panayotova greeted the guests for the initiative to organize a public presentation, together with the Ministry of Finance on the World Bank Report "Golden Growth: Restoring the lustre of the European economic model".
Mr. Harold presented to MPs the main conclusions of the World Bank Report, highlighting the need to provide additional measures to encourage enterprise and innovations. In this connection, he recommended to proceed towards further reduction of the business regulations. In terms of innovation, Mr. Harold drew attention to the fact that innovations starts from education and should therefore encourage investments in higher education and human potential.

The report analyzes the labor market situation and the social security systems, including pension systems and unemployment support. Regarding Bulgaria, Mr. Harold pointed out the alarming trend of workforce decrease in the country at the fastest world rate. Significant factor for the negative trend is the progressively aging population. In this connection, Mr. Harold suggests as a solution of the problem, to extend the working life of the employees.
Mr. Mihajlovski presented the activity of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) - the biggest world creditor, which develops its activities in 180 countries and aims to support the private sector. For Bulgaria, the program includes support in sectors such as renewable energy, agriculture and others. IFC granted Bulgarian banks $ 90 million in the form of credit lines for commercial financing. According to Mr. Mihajlovski the Bulgarian business moves away from export in low added value sectors to high added value sectors, i.e. Information and Communication Technologies.
In conclusion, Mr. Repnik and Mr. Harold stated that Bulgaria emerges from the crisis with one of the lowest budget deficits and debt, which indicates its long-term strategy for maintaining financial stability.
The World Bank analyzes aim through the provision of independent, objective evaluation of the processes in the country, to provoke Bulgarian authorities to examine the outlined challenges from different viewpoints.
The World Bank team expressed confidence that during the next meeting it will be able to report on the results achieved in regard to the signed MoU.

The World Bank Report "Golden Growth: Restoring the lustre of the European economic model "can be found at: