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Bulgaria

Bulgaria asks for more EU help to deal with floods

SOFIA, Aug 24 (Reuters) - Bulgaria has asked the European Union for more help to pay for 850 million levs ($529.6 million) of damage caused by floods that ravaged the Balkan state this summer, a government official said on Wednesday.
Twenty five people have been killed in three spates of flooding from May to August as rivers swollen by torrential rain burst their banks and breached dams.

Impoverished Bulgaria, which hopes to join the EU in 2007, first asked the bloc to help it pay for 400 million levs' worth of damage in July after storms and floods killed 17 people and inundated large parts of the country.

Deputy Finance Minister Kiril Ananiev said subsequent floods had pushed the cost of damage up to 850 million levs, with that amount expected to rise further.

"We have sent a second application to the EU updating the damage estimates from the floods which happened in early August," Ananiev said.

"It is clear that with the damages from the recent heavy rains, the cost will easily exceed one billion levs."

A third series of heavy storms that hit Bulgaria earlier this month and left more than 14,000 people homeless has been the most devastating, he said.

Ananiev said the government had already extended 200 million levs from the budget -- above a planned 55.5 million levs for disasters -- and could not possibly deal with the catastrophic aftermath on its own.

Finance Minister Plamen Oresharski has also indicated he will ask the International Monetary Fund, Bulgaria's main economic mentor, for approval to spend part of Bulgaria's 1.1 billion lev budget surplus to help deal with the damage.