By the end of May this year the 17 434 709 BGL were transferred to professional pension funds by the National Insurance Institute. This is written as a statistic in the bulletin of the National Insurance Institute. 171 467 are the social insured people by the end of May. On 25th of April the consecutive official rearrangement of the people with no professional or universal fund took place.

Bulgaria is in second place in the world in the production of fake money and is in first place in revealing these crimes, said the Chief Secretary Boiko Borisoiv. The operation for the revealing of the fake money and documents printing press was held Saturday night, said the director of the Regional Office of Internal Affairs Valentin Petrov. Two people were arrested for the production and the distribution of fake bank-notes of 200 and 500 EURO. The bank-notes were distributed in three European countries.

In Monday the director of the National Insurance Institute announced that in the changes of the Obligatory National Insurance Code, ratified in the beginning of July, is written that penalty interest amounting to the Prime-Interest rate plus 20% will be charged to all debts to the National Insurance Institute that are overdue. During the last six months the Prime-Interest rate fluctuates around 2.5% to 3%.

Up to 30 June 2003, the number of registered labour agreements in the National Insurance Institute were 3 197 339. This figure counts in the 1 970 000 contracts up to the beginning of the year. In the period January -June the employers have made additional 708 000 contracts.

On July the 7th 2003 the Board of Executive Directors of the IMF finished the third review of Bulgaria on the execution of the economic program of the Government in accordance with the two year standby agreement. The decision of the Board gives Bulgaria the opportunity to receive, in three days time, the sixth transfer of 36.5 million USD.

Investor.bg reported that the official presentation of the Global report on mankind's development for the year 2003, devoted to the Purposes of the millennium for development, started yesterday in Dublin. According to the index Bulgaria is in 57th place, which is 5 places up in comparison with year 2002, and is ahead of Rumania (72nd), Macedonia (60th) and Albania (95th). The Human Development Institute (HDI) placed Bulgaria among the countries with "medium stage of human development".

Up to July 15th the mobile groups of the Customs Agency that have been jointly created with the British consultant in the customs' reform "Crown Agents", have executed more than 700 thorough and 856 partial searches. 2012 cars have been checked and 191 cases of lowered custom value, 104 cases of wrong description of the goods and 117 cases of undeclared goods have been detected.

Nearly 13% growth in the number of the submitted tax declarations, registered the Central Tax Department. From June 2001 to May 2003, more than 70212 tax revisions have been executed, and additional 1.8 billion BGL tax debts have been discovered. The Prosecutors' Office has been given 1037 signals for tax evasions amounting to nearly 316 million BGL. During this period 678 220 tax check-ups have been executed.

200 to 1000 BGL fine is set for those who don't report their payables and receivables from foreign citizens. This is what is stated in our monetary law. The fine for companies and sole proprietors is between 2000 and 10000 BGL. The fine for illegal import or export of currency for physical person is from 1000 to 3000 BGL. For legal person the fine is two times bigger-2000 to 6000.

According to the Ministry of Finance by the end of May the surplus in the republican budget is 609 million BGL. For the first five months of the year, over the consolidated fiscal program the surplus is 618 282 500 BGL. The revenues in it are 5 813 317 600 BGL. 4 482 808 900 BGL of them are tax receipts and the costs are 5 195 035 100 BGL.

According to the data from the web page of the Ministry of Finance a surplus of 609.720 million BGL was found with the completion of the republican budget. The revenue is more than 3.626 billion BGL, which is 47.3% of the revenue planned for the whole year. The financial minister Milen Velchev explained that it is a 15% growth. The revenue from taxes is 2.692 billion /44.2%/ BGL and the non-tax revenue is 523.130 million /44.2%/ BGL.

Almost 5% is the reduction of the unemployment rate during the last two years according to the vice-Premier and Social minister Lidia Shuleva. The unemployment rate in May was 14.72%. The data shows that number of unemployed people have dropped with another 22 000 last month and have reached the figure of 506 thousand or 13.67%.

A check-up of the Chamber of Accounts reveals that there are no violations of the operations of the Ministry of Finance concerning the internal debt of the country. The assessment shows that there is a significant reduction of the government's debt last year. According to the last data it amounts to 9.296 billion EURO, which is a 12.5% reduction in comparison with 2001.

By unofficial reports presented in the "Week" show on the National Bulgarian Television, around 1,5 billion BGL budget funds are spent each year on public orders. According to the corruption report of "Coalition 2000", last year the firms, which won the public orders, have given more than 15 million BGL for bribes.

More than 1 200 000 000 are the debts of the enterprises and the political parties that can not be collected by the government. In most of the cases the enterprises and the political parties in this list are from the so-called phantom firms. Their tax debts are bad debts, because nobody can find the people who represent them. These enterprises do not possess any assets to cover their debts.

2400 illegal multimedia products were confiscated by the police in Sozopol. During the last three days personnel from the economic department with the Bourgas' police administration carried out a joint special operation with their colleges from Sozopol. And Nessebar. Several trading sites for distributing, preserving, selling and renting of audio and video multimedia products and entertainment software without license or agreement with the cable operators were checked.

James Ralf is the new representative of the IMF for Bulgaria, said Jerald Shif the officer for the mission of the fund in the country. In a few days time the mandate of Pirita Sorsa the present representative of the fund in Bulgaria will expire. Jerald Shif her manager gave positive assessment of her work for the last two years.