Regional Development and Territorial Organization of Bulgaria.

Urbanization and Construction

from the Bulgaria 2001 Program of the National Government

The rebirth of the centralized management of the country and the use of a narrow branch approach during the last years still deepened regional disproportion. The number of municipalities and regions which have reached a critical level of poverty unemployment, depopulation, environmental failures, social and ethnic tension have increased.

In order to achieve a considerable change in that sphere:

• We shall engage ourselves with the implementation of a policy of balanced and sustainable regional development with regard to gradual bridging over the critical disproportion and offering to the population actual opportunities for overcoming the crisis and achieving future social and economic prosperity;
• We shall apply a differentiated regional approach in the structural reform and the implementation of the economic, social and environmental policies, reflecting the differences in the separate regions;
• We shall support the strengthening and development of local self-governance as a basis for actual democratization of society, relying on our traditions and the experience of the European countries.

The new policy in the regional development requires:

• Legal guarantees - development of general and specific laws;
• Institutional guarantees - establishment of inter-institutional council and regional agencies;
• Resource guarantees - establishments of national and regional funds, financed by international programs, municipal revenues and other sources;
• Project development through European programs with regard to adaptation to European requirements for sustainable development of the separate regions;
• Inter-institutional co-ordination in building a national technical infrastructure corridors along Bulgarian territory.

The delay should be overcome and that is why this year we shall:

• Prepare the Law on Regional Development;
• Establish an inter-institutional council for regional development;
• Provide co-ordination among the funds with regional influence;
• Start implementation of an European Union Program for Regional Development of the Republic of Bulgaria (1997 - 1999);
• Activate the implementation of the PHARE-INTERREG 9402 Program for cross border co-operation between Bulgaria and Greece.
• Establish an inter-institutional co-ordination of the activities for the establishment of a national infrastructure transport corridors, bridge on Danube river, border check points, oil pipelines, etc.

The regional and urban planning will be a priority for the government, so that we shall:

• Prepare the Law on the Territorial Organization;
• Submit to the National Assembly the Law on the General Urban Planning of Sofia;
• Summon a National Commission for Sustainable Development;
• Provide methodological support to the municipalities in the sphere of regional and urban planning;
• Undertake effective measures for coping with illegal construction.

Local self-government will have to meet the level of contemporary requirements and provide free development of the municipalities through:

• Improvement of the regional division of the country through optimizing the size and the number of the administrative-territorial units;
• Organizational, functional and staff capacity building of local authorities;
• Provision of actual financial and economic independence of the municipalities;
• Setting the national legislation in the field of the administrative-territorial reform in accordance with European legislation.

In order to achieve these goals we will prepare until the end of 1997 the legislative basis for the financial and economic independence of the municipalities and for the actual local self-government. We will prepare and submit to the National Assembly:

• Law on Local Finance;
• Law on Local Taxes and Fees;
• Law on the Amendment of Municipal Property Act and State Property Act, as well as regulations for their applications;
• Law on the Amendment of Law on the Administrative-Territorial Organization of the Republic of Bulgaria.

During the last years the urbanization have been left behind usually pointing out economical reasons. In order to receive the importance and significance of this activity:

• We shall improve the normative regulation for integrated management of the engineering infrastructure and the particular public utilities;
• We shall increase the share of the municipal ownership over these utilities;
• We shall establish economic regulators and mechanisms for support to the municipalities in the financing of the urbanization activities.

Our activities in as early as 1997 in the sphere of the urbanization will be directed towards:

• Restructuring of the water and sewerage companies into state-municipal companies;
• Implementation of pilot projects for reducing the losses of water for the consumers;
• Development of a national policy for the hard waste;
• Reconstruction measures in the regions hit hard by active landslide processes and introduction of a new landslide control and stabilization system;
• Establishing a legal status for the homeless and assisting in giving shelter to them.

As soon as 1997 the following will be carried out:

• Broad public discussion of a new policy in the housing sector;
• Preparation for the establishment of a National Association for Housing construction;
• Pilot study on new forms of crediting.

Construction and construction enterprise during the last years have passed to a great extent in private hands. At the same time, the main part of the assets in that sphere are still owned by the state. In order to do away with that absurdity it is necessary that a structural reform in planning constriction and production of construction materials be carried out through:

• Liquidation of all the loss-making state owned enterprises;
• Complete privatization of the construction companies;
• Optimum privatization of the construction materials enterprises;
• Abolishing the legal, administrative and economic obstacles to the private construction enterprises.

In accordance with the recommendations of the European experts the government will endeavor to accelerate the construction of up-to-date information system for the land, the real estate property and the population and to create conditions for CO-ordination between the separate sector information systems.

We shall pay special attention to the quick development of the cadastre information system which under the new conditions of sacred private property, free economic enterprise and market economy acquires a significant value in the following aspects:

• Property protection guaranteeing the welfare of the owner and the society;
• Quality and speedy service and support to the real estate market and the economic enterprise;
• Rapid improvement of the taxation effect and the fight against the economic crime;
• Support to all the national and local management bodies with speedy and quality territorial, fund and property information;
• Establishing of a new normative order in the sphere of information, distribution of the rights and obligations between the municipalities and the state.