By 1991 the Economic Policy Commission was the most important advisory body on economic reform for its parent body, the National Assembly. A number of economic proposals made in 1990 by the government of Prime Minister Andrei Lukanov were found inadequate and redrawn in 1991. A particularly difficult obstacle in establishing truly private enterprises was Decree Number 56, the 1989 formula that established semi-decentralized operating principles for firms and commercial organizations (see The Era of Experimentation and Reform , this ch.). In 1991 the National Assembly considered new laws addressing aspects of the transition to a market economy: the Commercial Law was to replace Decree Number 56 as the basic description of commercial enterprise operation; a complex of auditing and statistical laws were to put Bulgarian commerce on the same standards as potential Western investors. The Privatization Law was the last and most problematic item because, unlike the recipients of agricultural land under the Arable Land Law, private recipients of former state commercial enterprises had not been identified. The first goal of the Economic Policy Commission was to use tight monetary policy to eliminate unprofitable enterprises inherited from the CPE era; this would finally stabilize productivity after the precipitous fall that began in 1990 and accelerated in 1991. Once stability was reached, a full-scale privatization process would begin; the 1991 timetable called for the latter process to be well under way by early 1992.
Data as of June 1992