Ivaylo Kalfin

Deputy Ministers Rumyana Bachvarova, Meglena Kuneva, Ivaylo Kalfin, and Tomislav Donchev are to present Friday the achievements of the government in its first 100 days in office.

The four deputy ministers are to give a press conference in the Granite Hall of the Council of Ministers, according to the BGNES news agency.

Bulgarian Minister of Labor and Social Policy Ivaylo Kalfin has announced in a press release that a series of discussions will be held regarding the minimal wage in the country.

The events will be held between Labor Ministry and representatives of the labor unions in Bulgaria, who have sent an open letter to the institution earlier during the week.

The Bulgarian government dismissed the director of the National Employment Agency Asen Angelov.

The dismissal had been proposed by Deputy Prime Minister Ivaylo Kalfin and approved by Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, the Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) reports.

Operational program Human Resources Development 2014-2020 was officially launched Thursday in Plovdiv.

The ceremony was attended by Ivaylo Kalfin, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Labor and Social Policy.

The resources of the operational program for the 2014-2020 period amount to over BGN 2 B, according to reports of the BGNES news agency.

The low minimum wage disincentivises people from working and they prefer to live on benefits, according to Ivaylo Kalfin, Bulgaria's Minister of Labor and Social Policy.

Bulgaria must state very clearly it has no capacity to accept more refugees, the country's Deputy PM and Social Policy Minister Ivaylo Kalfin has said.

Kalfin told public broadcaster BNT on Monday that Bulgaria should avoid creating "ghettos" populated by unemployed people with no income, since such people "are prone to committing" radical actions.

France's Ambassador to Bulgaria Xavier Lapeyre de Cabanes has asked Ivaylo Kalfin, Minister of Labor and Social Policy, to explain in detail the pension reform adopted on Friday.

Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov is set to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday.

Borisov, who headed the government for a second term in October, is on an official visit to Berlin at the invitation of his German counterpart.

The abandoned South Stream gas pipeline and EU funding is due to top the two leaders' agenda.

Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov on Sunday backtracked on plans to freeze the minimum wage at its 2014 level in the next year's budget.

Instead, he said he will propose to increase the minimum wage by BGN 40 from its current level of BGN 340 in two steps next year  - to BGN 360 from January 1 and, "in the absence of a major cataclysm," to BGN 380 from the middle of 2015. 

Ivaylo Kalfin, Minister of Labor and Social Policy, has argued that an increase in the monthly minimum wage will give a boost to the economy.