The budget surplus will, once again, exceed BGN 1B (approximately EUR 500M) at the end of March, the Ministry of Finance forecasts.

The growth as compared to the same period of the previous year is mostly due to the higher social security and health insurance payments, a baseline effect on expenditures on pensions from their increase as from July 2016, expenditures on subsidies and growth of insurance payments related to the higher insurance contribution for the Pensions for Persons under Article 69 Fund which increased by 20 percentage points as compared to 2016.