New Platform Visualizes Municipal Investment Projects: Transparency and Control

The new internet platform will visualize the progress of projects under the municipal investment program. It was developed within 10 days with the aim of defragmenting and structuring data from various directorates and ministries, announced the caretaker Minister of Regional Development and Public Works, Nikolay Naydenov, at a press conference.

It contains an interactive map and graphs, as well as color-coding of funds, with black marking already disbursed amounts in 2024 – 2025, blue marking the funds requested from the Bulgarian Development Bank (BBR), and orange marking funds that are awaiting processing and have not yet been paid, explained Yordan Terziev, advisor to the minister. He said that there is the possibility of downloading the information in a machine-readable format for independent analysis by citizens and added that a commitment has been made to update the data every 14 days.

The development of the platform is in response to one of the priority tasks set by the caretaker Prime Minister Andrey Gyurov to the minister, as well as at the request of the municipalities - ensuring full transparency and fairness in the allocation of state funds to all municipalities, eliminating the practice of "arranging" projects through intermediaries.

The minister presented specific data on the financial flows under the municipal investment program as of March 2026, with a total of funds requested (2024 – 2025) amounting to just over 1,198,119,560 euros, requests to the BBR (from the beginning of 2026 to March 17, 2026) - 287,037,584 euros. He informed that almost all municipalities are included in the program, with the exception of the municipality of Treklyano, which is not in Annex 3 to the budget, and several other municipalities that are still at "zero level" or have not yet taken advantage of the resources.

The minister pointed out that the BBR currently has 172,962,415 euros for the projects and added that, compared to the declared payments, there appears to be a shortfall of nearly 100 million euros. According to the caretaker regional minister, the problem requires a political solution from the new National Assembly, as the extended version of the 2025 budget is currently being implemented.

The minister also reported on the progress of the implementation of the second task assigned to him by the Prime Minister - ensuring fair elections, noting that through the GRAO Directorate, an organization has been created for easy change of current address, including electronically via a special "blue button" on the ministry's website.

The Executive Director of the National Association of Municipalities in Bulgaria, Silvia Georgieva, who attended the press conference, congratulated the team of Minister Naydenov for their work on creating the platform and added that this information system will make it easier for each of the municipalities to monitor in real-time the process of their payment requests and to compare themselves with the other municipalities. "It is very important that the data is presented in an open format, which will allow analysis by all interested institutions," she added.