No final decision has been taken for the privatization of the postal service state-owned company "Bulgarian Posts EAD", the transport minister has said amid vehement protests from employees, trade unions and opposition leaders.
"The company will be taken off the list of firms, whose privatization is banned, just so that we can have that option available as well," Minister Ivaylo Moskovski said.
The amendments to the privatization law were tabled and adopted on the last day of June by the...
The newly-appointed CEO of the vastly-troubled Bulgarian State Railways BDZ Yordan Nedev has declared his intention to break even in 2012, not in 2014, as his predecessor intended.
Nedev, a financier who was appointed to replace Pencho Popov as CEO of the state-owned BDZ Holding in a surprise move by new Transport Minister Ivaylo Moskovski, spoke for the first time in public at a round table on the reforms in BDZ in Sofia on Wednesday.
"I feel as if I am at war," Nedev stated. "We are...
Societe Generale Expressbank is the winner in this year's contest for Bulgaria's "Bank of the Year", the Bank of the Year Association has announced.
Bulgaria's 14th annual Bank of the Year awards – first started in 1992 – were revealed at a news conference in Sofia on Wednesday in seven different categories, including the big "Bank of the Year" prize snatched by Societe Generale Expressbank.
UniCredit Bulbank, which landed the big prize last year, is now the winner in the "Client's Bank"...
A newly-discovered natural gas deposit near Lovech in Northern Bulgaria contains 10 billion cubic meters of gas, Bulgaria's Minister of Economy, Energy, and Tourism announced.
Traikov said that Bulgaria will soon be able to extract about 1 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year, or about one-third of its annual consumption.
He spoke Tuesday night without providing details about the deposit near Lovech but he apparently referred to an area around the village of Deventsi in central...
Several months before the opening of the first IKEA store in Bulgaria expected in the fall of 2011, the Fourlis Group, IKEA's franchisee for Bulgaria through its subsidiary House Market, announced the opening of 130 part-time jobs.
IKEA's store in Sofia is seeking service and administrative employees that can work shifts of 4 to 6 hours a day, the company said in a statement, stressing that its new demand of flexible labor will boost the labor market in the Bulgarian market and will create...
The average incomes of Bulgarians will surpass those of Romanians in two years, Bulgaria's Finance Minister Simeon Djankov vowed on Tuesday.
Djankov announced his ambitious plan speaking before the private bTV channel. He pointed out the Bulgarian GDP per capita expressed in Purchasing Power Standards is 43% of the EU average, while Romania's is just 2% higher, according to Eurostat.
In 2009, Bulgaria's GDP per capita expressed in PPS was a mere 37% of the EU average.
According to the...
The number of fully Romanian-owned companies who set up their headquarters in Bulgaria has increased eightfold over the past 5 years, according to Bulgaria's National Revenue Agency.
Thus, over 272 Romanian firms submitted corporate tax declarations to the Bulgarian tax authorities in 2010 compared with only 33 Romanian-owned companies in 2006, a year before Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU, the press office of the Bulgarian National Revenue Agency announced Tuesday.
The largest number...
The Bulgarian subsidiary of Swiss-based engineering manufacturer ABB Group has marked the employment of its 1000th employee in Bulgaria, the company announced in a statement.
ABB Bulgaria has managed to accomplish the doubling the number of its employees within two years, thus securing jobs to a significant number of people, even in regions with a high unemployment rate. The company statement stresses its slogan "A better world begins with you".
Global engineering giant ABB has been...
Toshiba is going to perform a feasibility study for the construction of a coal-fired thermal power plant in Bulgaria that will feature carbon capture and storage facilities (CCS), the Japanese company has announced, apparently moving closer to a potential massive energy investment.
Toshiba Corp will inspect if a TPP with a carbon capture and storage facility could be built in the Maritsa East complex in southeast Bulgaria, which features a large-scale lignite coal mining complex and three...
Some 800 Greek firms have been registered in Bulgaria in the first half of 2011, many of whom are said to have moved north because of the crisis in Greece.
About as many more can be expected to be set up in Bulgaria by the end of 2011, according to a report of the bTV channel, which reminds that the situation is similar with respect to Romanian-owned companies.
Firms from Bulgaria's two EU neighbors Greece and Romania are said to be drawn to moving to Bulgaria not just by the taxes, which...
The current driver for real estate values in Bulgaria, the income levels and domestic demand of the population, are set to result in a stable annual growth rate of 5-6% of real estate prices, Curtis M. Coward, CEO of the Arceland asset management fund told Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency) in an interview.
According to Coward, who is also a member of he Bulgarian Land and Property Owners Association (BULLPOA), that is a reliable, understandable, and credible number for a decade, as opposed to...
Bulgarian trade unions have reacted harshly against recent indications on part of the government that it plans to privatize, fully or partially, Bulgarian Posts EAD, Bulgaria's state postal operator.
After on last week, the Economy Committee of the Bulgarian Parliament approved a bill providing that Bulgaria's postal service state-owned company "Bulgarian Posts EAD" will be taken off the list of companies banned from being privatized, together with three other companies, on Monday,...
Only three companies have remained to bid for the privatization of Bulgaria's state-owned cigarette-making giant Bulgartabac Holding, and only one of them is a strategic investor – British American Tobacco.
In addition to BAT, only two companies registered in Austria – CB Family Office Services and BT Invest – have remained to bid for the purchase of a majority stake in Bulgartabac.
A total of 10 companies bought documents for the tender for the privatization of Bulgartabac Holding but...
Bulgaria's National Electric Company NEK and Russia's Atomstroyexport, a subsidiary of Rosatom, have signed an annex extending by 3 months their contract for the construction of the Belene NPP, which should become the second Bulgarian nuclear power plant.
The new "Annex No. 13" to the 2006 contract between the two state companies was inked late Friday night, the Bulgarian Ministry of Economy, Energy, and Tourism announced Saturday.
The newly-signed document effectively provides the two...
Bulgarian cities and towns will be visible through Google Street View as Google executives have already notified the Bulgarian authorities of their intention to launch the product for Bulgaria.
Bulgaria's Commission for Protection of Personal Data has been visited by Google officials from offices in Ireland and the Czech Republic several days ago, Commission head Veneta Shopova has announced.
The Google representatives, Simon Miechen from Ireland and Eva Martinikova from the Czech...
Bulgaria is going to save about BGN 8 M by opting to hold the upcoming presidential and local elections together, according to Finance Minister Simeon Djankov.
Speaking in Parliament Friday, Djankov explained that BGN 26 M have been slated under the 2011 State Budget Act for the holding of the double vote in the fall of 2011.
Individual elections (i.e. only presidential or only local) in the past have cost about BGN 16-18 M, said the Finance Minister and Deputy PM, who has been assigned...
Bulgarian-German company BCI OOD is going to invest over EUR 200 M in a photovoltaic park in the Kazanlak Municipality in Central Bulgaria.
The solar power park will be located in three villages in the municipality – Yasenovo, Cherganovo, and Golyamo Dryanovo.
The investment decision has been finalized after the Kazanlak Town Council voted to provide BCI with a construction permit right for 30 years, the Stara Zagora Chamber of Commerce announced.
To enjoy the construction right for...
The Bulgarian company "Adval" JSC and the German Ed. Z?blin AG held the grand opening of the third largest tunnel in Germany, the "Blessberg" tunnel, on Thursday.
The ceremony was attended by the German Minister of Transport Dr. Peter Rahmsauer, the Prime Minister of Thuringia Christine Lieberknecht, the Chairman of the Board of the German Railways (Deutsche Bahn AG) Dr. Ruediger Grube, the transport minister of Thuringia Christian Carius, the SPD deputy Sabine Doht and the Regional...
Bulgaria has witnessed a 1.2% monthly increase in the production of solid fuels to 2885 000 tons in March 2011, while the production of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) has gone up by 66.7% to 10 000 tons in the same period.
According to data of the National Statistical Institute (NSI), in March 2011 the production of unleaded gasoline goes up by 112.5% to 153 000 tons on the month, diesel fuel adds 97.8% to 184 000 tons and natural gas rises by 28.1% to 41 million standard cubic meters.
The...
The European Commission will allow a 2-year extension of the construction of the bridge across the Danube set to connect Bulgaria's Vidin and Romania's Calafat.
The so-called Danube Bridge 2, financed by EU's Instrument for Structural Policies for Pre-Accession (ISPA), was set to be completed by October 2010, but has been delayed due to technical...
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