Bulgaria seeks monetary aid from EU for battling unemployment

Sofia, Bulgaria: The Bulgarian administration is seeking assistance from the European Commission as it plans to request 999.4 million levs ($556.6 million/511 million euro) monetary aid from the organisation to overcome the impacts of the contagious COVID-19 pandemic. 

The request for assistance will be submitted under the European instrument for temporary support to alleviate the unemployment rate of the European country. As per the given information, this will be the second application of Bulgaria under the SURE mechanism. 

European Commission has already allocated a total sum amount of 511 million euros. The government officials noted that these funds obtained from the EU would be utilised to bolster the execution of its job retention scheme called – the ’60-40 measure’. 

This job scheme by the Bulgarian administration was launched in the month of April 2020, after the COVID-19 outbreak had an immense impact on the country’s employment rate. 

The monetary aid under SURE is provided by the EU as loans to its member states, assisting them in strengthening the country’s economy, which had been affected by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. 

In a recently released data previous week, the unemployment rate of the Balkan state has witnessed a significant decline by 0.1% on a month-on-month basis in March, reaching – 4.8%. 

Bulgaria slowly is moving towards reviving the pandemic affected economy. The country’s COVID-19 infection and the death rate is also witnessing a decrease. 

Since the beginning of the outbreak of viral illness, Bulgaria has recorded more than 115,000 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus, as per the official data, whereas a total of 36,838 individuals with the COVID-19 pandemic lost their lives to the deadliest novel coronavirus. 

In addition, the international monetary fund (IMF) has predicted a growth of 3.2% for GDP for the ongoing fiscal year for the European country. Previously, the growth was estimated at 4.4%.