PM, Finance Minister Praise Bulgaria's Achievements to IMF, World Bank Representatives

Bulgaria's Prime Minister emphasized Bulgaria's progress in the fight against corruption and the informal economy and the efforts of the government to guarantee financial stability at a meeting with representatives of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in Sofia.

Laura Tuck, Vice President for the World Bank's Europe and Central Asia Region, World Bank Country Director for Central Europe and the Baltic Countries, Mamta Murthi, and Poul Thomsen, Deputy Director of the IMF's European Department, met Saturday in Sofia with Bulgaria's Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov, and Bulgarian National Bank Governor Ivan Iskrov.

"We work to guarantee political stability in Bulgaria and the improvement of the country's international reputation. In the first six months of our term in office we concentrated efforts on the solution of urgent problems, but we are now taking a long-term perspective," Borisov said at the meeting, according to a media statement of the government.

"We created a specialized anti-smuggling unit including experts from our special services, the National Revenue Agency, the Customs Agency, the Interior Ministry, and the prosecuting authority. The result of these targeted efforts is a budget surplus of nearly BGN 1.2 B in end-May. Compared to the same period of 2014 we collected over BGN 2 B more," Borisov noted.

"We reformed the special services which had been functioning without statutes for the past 25 years. We have excellent teams of experts working on EU funds absorption, which allows us to make significant progress in the construction of strategic infrastructure in Bulgaria. Every month we are opening new sites, be it motorways, water purification plants, or subway lines, and...