Deputy Minister Denitsa Nikolova: Balanced development of the entire territory of the country is one of the main goals of the new statistical zoning

We shouldn’t seek competition between big cities, but regional projects that would contribute to the development of their surrounding territories

Balanced development of the entire territory of the country, rather than focusing investment in the big cities is one of the main goals of the new statistical zoning of Bulgaria. We will thus overcome the imbalances between the regions as growth centers will be established to attract investment and contribute to the development of the other settlements in a given area. This is what Denitsa Nikolova, Deputy Minister of Regional Development, stated in an interview for the Before All radio show of the Bulgarian National Radio. According to her, focusing investment mainly in big cities leads to negative effects such as internal migration. “We strive to provide more employment opportunities for a better standard of living to get people back to smaller settlements,” she said. According to her, the establishment of new NUTS 2 regions will allow for better targeting of regional policy towards the development of each region in terms of its potential and resource supply, unveiling the opportunities for economic development.

Deputy Minister Nikolova noted that in the discussions and public forums at the level of planning regions in the country, out of the three options for new zoning - with 6, 5 and 4 regions – there was a consensus on the establishment of 4 regions – Danube, Western, Black Sea and Thracian-Rhodopean. “All three options we offer share one main objective - to establish areas that are sustainable in terms of population and future scope of territory, as one of EU’s main requirements in this respect is not to have regions with a population of less than 800 thousand inhabitants,” Denitsa Nikolova explained. The Deputy Regional Minister gave an example that the Black Sea region would allow for achieving better economic effects with Black Sea resources for port development, freight transport business, etc. “We have to consider regions in their integrity, and not their distinction from the point of view of a particular city or which one will be the center. In the establishment of a Black Sea region, we can seek for the opportunity to implement a regional project such as the Black Sea motorway, allowing for economic connections between the two big cities - Varna and Burgas. We must not seek competition between them, but rather accomplish the much more global goal of developing all the other settlements that are connected with these cities,” Nikolova said. The establishment of a Danube region, in turn, seeks for the possibility of using the Danube River as a development factor, as the Danube River corridor is mainly used as a transport connection and for freight transport, for tourism, using the river’s potential for economic development, horizontal interconnection between cities and districts, etc. “We shouldn’t seek for competition between cities, but rather discuss how regional projects can be implemented together to positively affect the development of the territory,” Denitsa Nikolova said.

The Regional Deputy Minister explained that after such zoning, a decision should be made as to which structures will be responsible for regional policy at the region level. According to her, these structures do not necessarily have to be newly formed, but may already exist. They should, however, include the businesses, the non-governmental sector and civil society, she stressed, adding that this isn’t currently the case. She doesn’t yet know exactly what the structures will be.

Next task after zoning is to optimize the number of strategic documents for regional development. “At the moment, the great number of zoning documents certainly don’t bring good results in terms of regional development. The goal is to achieve economic impact in the long run, but also to look for an opportunity to overcome the negative demographic trend, which is at present a serious challenge for all regions of the country,” Denitsa Nikolova said. After region establishment and zoning, regional spatial and strategic planning should be made to utilize the potential of each region.

On the issue of decentralization, the Deputy Minister of Regional Development and Public Works explained that the direction of financial or fiscal decentralization or the overall decentralized management is linked to the requirements for a very high capacity - administrative, financial and technical capacity, which at this stage is non-existent at the regional level, because our country has no traditions in the management and implementation of policies at the regional level. The first step will be regions to acquire the capacity to select projects that contribute to the development to the greatest extent.