Speaking to reporters at the National Assembly on Thursday, former Prime Minister and Coalition for Bulgaria leader Sergei Stanishev claimed that Finance Minister Simeon Djankov's idea to deposit Bulgaria's fiscal reserve with commercial banks has been obviously inspired by external economic factors.

Stanishev added that the formerly ruling triple coalition withstood political and economic pressure aimed at forcing the government to transfer the fiscal reserve under the management of investment and commercial banks, "allegedly to achieve higher profitability, but with a risk of losing the money".

According to Coalition for Bulgaria, it is alarming that the government sends contradictory signals and changes its position every day, thus creating hesitation in foreign investors and threatening the Exchequer and the currency board, Stanishev explained, alluding to Prime Minister Boyko Borissov's Wednesday statement that the fiscal reserve will not be touched.

Stanishev said that Borissov's Cabinet is likely to come up with such "unpredictable steps" also in future and decried Djankov's ideas as "extravagant and risky". The transfer of Bulgaria's fiscal reserve to commercial banks would put it at risk and would feed foreign economies.

Stanishev explained that in 2008 the state budget grew by 400 million leva as a result of good management of the reserve and that Djankov's claims that interest rates are too low are not true. The fiscal reserve amounted to 8 billion leva at the end of the triple coalition's tenure, compared to 4.5 billion leva at its beginning.

Source: BTA