Campaign for the preservation of the state subsidies for NGOs, allocated by competition

On 31.10.2011, the Council of Ministers approved a Draft State Budget Law of the Republic of Bulgaria for 2012 which was introduced in Parliament. The proposed text does not provide for any funding for NGO public benefit projects (these funds were 750 000 BGN in 2011). Thus the practice of allocating part of the NGO subsidies by competition has been completely terminated. The approved text is totally controversial to the recommendations in the „Assessment of the mechanism of allocating budget funds designed for NGOs”, developed by BCNL team in the beginning of 2011.

The assessment proposes 4 scenarios for changes in granting state subsidies to NGOs. Two of them include eliminating direct subsidies and granting funds only by competition, and the other two envisage preserving the existing model with a change in the proportion between direct subsidies and competition funding (for 2011 competition funding is 7% of the common budget).

In view of the obvious unwillingness of the state to suspend direct subsidizing of NGO and move to entirely competition funding, we insist on:
·    Maintaining the reserve of funds for competition funding of NPCB social benefit projects in the 2012 budget. The share of this reserve must be minimum 20 % of the common NGO subsidy, namely 2 million BGN of the provided over 10 million.
·    Maintaining the reserve in long-term plan, with a tendency of predominant competition funding.

A petition has been uploaded on WWW.NGOBG.INFO – the information portal of NGOs in Bulgaria. Sign it if you support our demands.
SUPPORT THE PETITION!