The government wants the municipal investment programme to continue and the late payments to councils to be made up, regional development minister Ivan Shishkov said in Albena.

This report follows our earlier story on the opening in Albena of the annual meeting of local authorities, which runs until 13 October.

Shishkov spoke at a panel called "Predictable funding and quality delivery of municipal investment" in the Peruanika hall of the resort complex. The panel is part of the forum "The quality of the investment process – a shared responsibility of the state, municipalities and business", which is held as part of the annual meeting of local authorities.

The minister said the whole government, including the finance minister, is working to make sure the programme has the money it needs.

Over the past two or three years, councils have not been able to predict when the programme would pay out, and payments have come late. Shishkov named three causes: a build-up of problems, the political crisis and uncertainty over whether the programme would continue. Both the councils, as clients, and the construction firms lose out. Part of the delay fell in the best season for building work.

Officials are now working hard to catch up and bring payments back to their normal pace. Projects whose requests were filed by the end of 2025 can also be added.

The minister said the old system pushed councils to race each other to see which would have its sites ready first and get the money. Priority should go to the projects that matter most for the development of towns and villages.

"The most important thing is for us to draw up this strategy together and say: 'These projects are the important ones and we will invest in them,'" Shishkov said.

"Before the funding, we have to set out the clear, sensible, most important projects, and they should come first, and then the funding should come," he added. He said this would let councils plan with more certainty that the money will be there, and the programme should run for a longer period.

The aim is to improve living conditions as much as possible with the money available, without wasting public funds, to clear the delays and, at the same time, to plan priority investments for the coming years.

State support is for the people who live in these places, not only for mayors, the minister said.