In
1989 the Berlin Wall fell and the so-called “transition period”
for Central and Eastern Europe began. The goal pursued was a radical
change of society at economic, political and social level. In
relation to this, Bulgaria endorsed a variety of development
programs, which were manipulated by the two supranational
institutions – the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
The country was quickly encompassed by a wide network of
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) whose number amounts nowadays
to 38,000. The UN agencies, supranational authorities and NGOs
organized and coordinated Bulgaria’s transition through the same
methods, ideas and language, which were being used for the Third
World Countries by that time.
by
Daniela Penkova
PART
6 - The Results
“Growth
for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” -
Edward Abbey, „Desert Solitaire”
For 25 years of democratization the Bulgarian population
has melted by over 1,600,000 – in 2013 the population was 7,245,677
people. Most capable of working citizens leave the country looking
for jobs abroad. One of the biggest problems the country is facing is
the brain drain – lots of university graduates emigrate to the
West. Despite the strong emigration there are still 433,200
unemployed in Bulgaria – 13% according to the official data from
2013.
In 2013 the trade balance was negative by 4,794,578
dollars, as it has been negative through all the years since 1991.
Yet, GDP has tripled reaching 7498 dollars per capita.
The number of hospital beds decreases, reaching 606.9
per 100,000 citizens. The restructuring of the health and education
systems, carried out according to the conditions of the loans from
the World Bank and the IMF, depicts extremely well the negative
effect of the “aid” of the financial institutions on the social
sector and the human resources working there. Even if we accept that
they have been in the need to be improved and modernized, the radical
changes in these sectors have totally devastated all the positive
results achieved by that moment.
In addition, the personnel in these sectors consisting
of 70-80% women was drastically reduced. In this case as well as in
many other cases of restructuring and privatization, the reforms have
had an extremely negative effect mostly on women. The international
institutions and the national governments do not take into
consideration the influence of the reforms on the human aspect.
In the years of the transition since 1989 the health
status of the Bulgarian population has been worsening, the death rate
has been increasing (especially among capable of working men because
of cardiovascular diseases), the demographic growth has been
diminishing (and now is negative, -0.8) and the social inequality has
been deepening.
It is obvious that the neoliberal measures, imposed on
the developing countries with catastrophic results, achieve the same
effect of impoverishment in the countries of the former Socialist
Block. But in this case it is impossible to put in motion the usual
excuses for lacking industrialization, having in mind that it was
very well developed in Bulgaria at the dawn of transition.
In Bulgaria’s case we are not talking about some
“inherent” poverty, which the policies of development were unable
to eradicate. We are talking here about a full dismantling of well
functioning industry and social structures. Hunger and poverty have
been brought by those neoliberal policies “of development” and
now we should ask ourselves: Is it not high time to get rid of them
already? And if so, what economic policies do we have to undertake?
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