Bulgaria's finance minister, who was initially targeting rapid accession to the euro zone, has confirmed the country is in no hurry to adopt the single currency.
"We will not make any move toward the switchover in the next two years," Simeon Djankov told reporters in Vienna on Thursday.
The statement is in line with the opinion of local analysts, who have tried to tone down the cabinet's enthusiasm for adopting rapidly the common European currency, saying it makes more sense for the...
Bulgaria has registered an increase in its foreign direct investment in January-May 2012 year-on-year, according to the latest data of the Bulgarian National Bank released on Monday.
According to the Bulgarian National Bank's preliminary data, the foreign direct investment in Bulgaria for January - May 2012 increased by EUR 473.8 M (1.2% of GDP), compared to an increase of EUR 72.2 million (0.2% of GDP) for January – May 2011.
Bulgaria's attracted Equity Capital (acquisition/disposal of...
Bulgaria's Currency Board Is Super Stable
(Sofia, Jan 12) - "The currency board functioning in Bulgaria is super-stable," the monthly analysis of Raiffeissen Bank Bulgaria reads.
The experts have calculated that at the end of November 2012 the currency board's reserves amount to 15.1 billion euro, which is an increase by 2.2 million euro from a month ago.
The board's reserves have increased by 1.9 billion euro (14.4%) year-on-year, which is a surplus of about 89% to the minimum...
Wall Street legend and highly successful international investor, author and commodities expert, Jim Rogers has said he is considering investing in Bulgaria.
Bulgaria is among the few countries, in which he is considering investing right now, since they have made the most improvement since his latest trip around the world, the billionaire, currently based in Singapore, said in an interview for Gold Radio Cafй.
He joined the broadcast for a brief discussion on his new book "Street Smarts:...
Italian companies may be attracted in privatization projects, including for tourist sites, as well as concessions agreements and modernization schemes for airports, and construction and reconstruction of road and railway infrastructure in Bulgaria, according to Minister Bozhidar Lukarski.
Speaking Tuesday at the opening of an economic forum titled “Bulgaria and Italy: Together for Achieving Growth”, Lukarski pointed out that the trade and economic cooperation between Bulgaria and Italy...
“The opportunities OP Environment provides in the previous and the new programme periods establish prerequisites for a huge volume of work on designing and construction of ecological infrastructure as well as possibilities for the state to tackle challenges,“ said Ivelina Vasileva, Bulgarian Minister of Environment and Water, speaking at an annual conference themed “Strategic infrastructure and investments – Bulgaria and the Western Balkans“, FOCUS News Agency reported.
“In the...
Jordan's Minister of Industry and Trade Hani El-Mulki has invited Bulgarian businesses to help the reconstruction of the Iraqi economy together with Jordanian companies.
El-Mulki met with Bulgaria's Deputy Minister of Economy Evgeni Angelov during a visit of a Bulgarian delegation in Amman. Angelov invited Jordan's Minister of Industry and Trade to visit Bulgaria.
According to him and El-Mulki, there are good conditions for expanded presence of Bulgarian engineering companies in Jordan's...
Bulgaria's government is going to sell its 7.58% share of the Kempinski Hotel Zografski, one of the five-star hotels in Sofia.
The state has already included its minority stake in the Zografski AD firm, which owns the Kempinski hotel in Sofia, in the State Consolidation Company created in 2010 to handle the privatization of state minority shares in various businesses, according to a report of the 24 Chasa daily.
The total of 125 315 shares have a nominal value of BGN 1, and are owned by...
Bulgaria's Agriculture Minister, Miroslav Naydenov, is leaving Friday on an official visit to Jordan.
The visit will conclude on March 29 and is on the invitation of the Jordanian Agriculture Ministry.
Naydenov and the Bulgarian delegation will participate in a forum of Jordanian and Bulgarian companies from the farming, forestry, hunting, food manufacturing, and wood industries. The Minister will meet representatives of the Association of the Growers and Exporters of Vegetables and will...
Main boulevards in the Bulgarian capital will undergo active repair works, the Sofia Deputy Mayor for Transport, Lyubomir Hristov, said Friday.
In his words, by the end of April, pavement renewal has to be competed on the Alexander Malinov Blvd, Tsarigradsko Shose, Bulgaria Blvd and Tsar Osvoboditel Blvd.
The Sofia Municipality has provided BGN 27 M for ongoing repairs of streets and boulevards.
"Ten days ago we launched the program for implementation of the ongoing repair works of...
A leading Italian construction company CMC di Ravenna has been selected by the Bulgarian government to build Lot 1 of the Maritsa Highway leading up to the border with Turkey.
Cooperativa Muratori e Cementisti – or CMC di Ravenna – has offered the best price out of seven eligible offers. A total of 12 companies took part in the tender for the construction of Lot 1 of the Maritsa Highway but the Bulgarian government eliminated five of them for not meeting the requirements.
The price...
Within a month Bulgaria will start exporting chicken meat to Jordan, said Yordan Voynov, head of the Bulgarian Food Safety Agency.
He is part of the official Bulgarian delegation to Jordan, led by Agriculture Minister Miroslav Naydenov.
"The export will initially start with about 100 tons per month," Voynov said.
According to Naydenov, the import of fruits and vegetables from Jordan will continue, but their quality will have to be proven through laboratory tests.
His statement was...
The international airport in Bulgaria's Black Sea city of Varna will serve 19 regular routes in the summer season of 2011.
The summer schedule of Varna Airport enters into force as of March 27, 2011; the first foreign tourists for the nearby Black Sea resorts are expected to arrive on Monday, March 28.
The new destinations that Varna will have direct flights to Cologne, Germany; Katowice, Poland; Samara and Kazan, Russia. The destinations with the highest frequency of outbound Varna...
The project for the construction of Bulgaria's second nuclear power plant "Belene" is completely ready, according to Kiril Komarov, CEO of the nuclear energy complex of Rosatom and director of Atomenergoproekt.
"The project is fully prepared and no outside factors – save for "political emotions" - can affect it substantially," Komarov told a meeting in the Russian State Duma of its committee for cooperation with the Bulgarian Parliament, as cited by RIA Novosti.
The senior Rosatom...
Bulgaria exported a previously unrecorded amount of honey in 2010, according to Gancho Ganchev, head of the National Beekeepers' Union.
Bulgaria producers exported between 7 200 and 7 700 tons of honey in 2010 out of a total of 12-13 000 produced last year, Ganchev said at the opening of the international expo "Bee-Mania" in the northeastern city of Dobrich.
"There has never been such an export of honey before. The export increased by 1 500 tons, with the first honey of rapeseed being...
Bulgaria's center-right GERB party Cabinet plans to raise BGN 450 M from privatization of fully or partly state-owned companies in 2011, according to Emil Karanikolov, head of the Privatization Agency.
The companies on the table include a couple of "giants" – cigarette-maker Bulgartabac, Bulgaria's largest military plant VMZ Sopot, and construction company Technoexportstroy – as well as some smaller companies and state minority stakes in power utilities.
The government will most...
Algeria's Ambassador to Bulgaria Ahmed Boutache has invited Bulgarian construction entrepreneurs to seek opportunities to participate in massive projects in his country.
His Excellency met Thursday with the chair of the Confederation of Employers and Industrialists in Bulgaria (CEIBG) Ognyan Donev and CEIBG executive director Evgeniy Ivanov.
Ambassador Boutache has invited CEIBG, one of the major business associations in Bulgaria, to participate in the Program for Reconstruction and...
The Bulgarian Cabinet has approved a procedure for offering on concession the currently inactive passenger airport of Gorna Oryahovitsa located in the very center of Northern Bulgaria.
The goal of the government is to find a concessionaire that would help attract passenger and freight traffic and will invest in the infrastructure and modernization of the airport.
The development of the Gorna Oryahovitsa Airport is one of the goals of the Transport Ministry, and is included in the Strategy...
UK oil and gas group Melrose Resources Plc has reported an increase of its 2010 revenues as a result of its development of Bulgarian natural gas fields.
Melrose Resources reported a pre-tax profit of USD 30 M for the year to December, down from the previous USD 31 M, on revenue up 7% to USD 24 M from USD 224 M, Stock Market Wire reported.
The rise in revenue reflected increased production volumes from Bulgaria as new gas fields came on stream, the report says.
Chairman Robert Adair is...
Bulgaria's total advertising market amounted to BGN 329.18 M in 2010, which is a decline of 13.9% compared with 2009.
Krassimir Guergov, chair of the Bulgarian Association of Advertising Agencies, announced at an advertising forum in Sofia, as cited by BTA, that the advertising prices saw a similar decline compared with their levels in 2009.
"The preliminary results for 2010 show a decline that is twice as large as the original forecasts," Guergov pointed out.
A year ago, the...
German company Wintershall has signed with Gazprom a preliminary agreement to acquire 15% of the South Stream pipeline.
This development gives a significant boost to the project, ahead of Russian PM Vladimir Putin's visit to Serbia and Slovenia to negotiate on it.
Over the previous months, there have been repeated reports that the German company, the largest producer of oil and gas in Germany, and owned by BASF, will be joining.
Russian PM Vladimir Putin expressed strong satisfaction...
Bulgaria can achieve economic growth of 2.6% in 2011, according to the forecast of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
The Bank's chief expert, Erik Berglof, however, warns the country is facing significant challenges while the biggest source of alarm is the possibility for the lessons from the crisis to not transfer into reforms.
"Prices are going up and the negative effects of the crisis are fading away too slowly," Berglof says.
The expert points out exports...
The Russian Metrovagonmash is the wining bidder in the public procurement tender for the delivery of trains for the Sofia metro.
The Russian plant, located in Mytishchi, near Moscow, will deliver 18 trains of three cars each. The cars are from the 81-740/741 "Rusich" series.
The information was reported in Russian media Tuesday.
The other participant in the tender has been the Spanish company CAF.
Since it first opened doors in 1998, the subway in the Bulgarian capital has used only...
There is a "huge" interest among investors for the Bulgarian Stock Exchange, which launched the sale of its shares in January, according to Finance Minister Simeon Djankov.
Djankov declared in Sofia Tuesday that by the end of 2011 Bulgaria will have found a strategic investor for its stock exchange.
He further said that the Finance Ministry does not take part in the sale, which is handled by the Board of Directors of the BSE.
Interestingly, last Thursday, Assen Yagodin, president of...
The Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) has welcomed in Sofia the leadership of the newly-founded Macedonian-Bulgarian Economic Chamber.
The Macedonian-Bulgarian Economic Chamber (MBEC) was set up on February 24, 2011, in Skopje, by 51 business founders.
On Tuesday, its chair Borislav Zahariev, CEO of Capital Bank in Macedonia, and Ljubomir Josifovski, director of the MBEC presented their program and priorities to the chair of the BCCI Tsvetan Simeonov.
Ivan Zherkov,...
Some 60% of the growth of Bulgaria's exports is the result of an increase in the quantity of the exported goods, according to an analysis of the Bulgarian Industrial Association (BIA).
BIA points out that in 2010 Bulgaria's export did manage to surpass the 2008 level – the highest recorded export the country had before it was massively affected by the global financial and economic crisis.
Thus, in 2010, Bulgaria's exports amounted to BGN 30.5 B, which is BGN 7.6 B more than in 2009, or...
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