Bulgarian government to pay Christmas bonuses to pensioners
The Bulgarian government has allocated 51.6 million leva to pay bonuses to pensioners who get the lowest-level pensions, Prime Minister Boiko Borissov said at the start of the regular weekly Cabinet meeting on November 14.
The payments will go to about 1.2 million pensioners, through an additional transfer to the state social security budget.
Borissov said that with the sum approved on November 14, his third government had provided more than 200 million leva (about 100 million euro) in pension supplements.
Over the course of his three governments, close to half a billion leva had been allocated to bonuses to low-income pensioners at Christmas and Easter, Borissov said. He said that the sums had been collected by revenue agencies as a result of the fight against smuggling and the illicit economy.
For several years, it has been the practice of a succession of Bulgarian governments, including those not headed by Borissov, to pay bonuses to pensioners at Easter and Christmas. In recent years, the sum each pensioner gets as a bonus is about 40 leva.
