Bulgaria to pay 120 leva Christmas bonuses to pensioners below poverty line
Bulgaria’s Cabinet agreed on November 26 to pay Christmas bonuses of 120 leva each to pensioners below the 638 leva poverty line, Labour and Social Policy Minister Borislav Gutsanov told reporters.
This will cost about 64 million leva and will cover about 536 000 people.
“The calculation has been done, the money is there. All the people who will receive these supplements can rest assured,” Gutsanov said.
Earlier in November, Denitsa Sacheva, the GERB-UDF MP who heads Parliament’s portfolio committee on labour and social policy, said that this year there would not be Christmas supplements for pensioners.
However, this was reversed when GERB-UDF leader Boiko Borissov proposed the 120 leva Christmas bonus.
On November 19, Parliament’s labour and social policy committee gave Gutsanov until December 20 to come up with legislative amendments providing for bonuses at Christmas and Easter for society’s most vulnerable groups, including pensioners, single parents, large families and socially disadvantaged individuals living on their own.
Gutsanov said on November 26 that work was being done on this.
For several years, it has been the practice of most of a succession of Bulgarian governments to pay bonuses to pensioners at Easter and Christmas.
(Archive photo: Interior Ministry)
