Date Target Vendor Investor Size Comment
June 21 New mineral water bottling factory Thorn Spring, Bankya, Trun Municipality Hydrocomp, Bulgaria n/a The company intends to sell 10-15 mln liters of the new water domestically in 2005. Hydrocomp has held preliminary export talks with partners from Britain, the Netherlands, Lebanon and Dubai.
June 20 Planned real estate investments Bulgaria Spanish real estate company Contsa EUR 4 mln The company will focus on investments in the Black Sea coast, which the company considers to be an emerging tourism area in Eastern Europe.
June 20 Energy Efficiency Project Ministry of Energy Global Environment Facility (GEF) Trust Fund n/a A supplementary agreement for financial support to secure grants for the project was signed.
June 20 A residential complex Borovets ski resort Dubai and New Zealand companies n/a The Borovets resort enjoys great interest. Bulgaria is planning to build a new super-resort near it. The new holiday settlement will be located between Borovets and Samokov, and will have an accommodation capacity for about 7,000 people. That is part of the government's special strategy for the development of Borovets until 2015.
June 20 50 projects approved for financing n/a Bulgaria's National Innovation Fund (NIF) EUR 2.5 mln NIF's '05 budget is 5 mln levs and will increase to 8 mln levs in '06 and to 13 mln levs in '07.
June 19 A a large-scale program for co-financing regional infrastructure projects Bulgarian infrastructure projects Greek government EUR 45 mln The program is estimated to EUR 550 mln
June 17 Construction/estableshment Printing materials bourse Bulgarian paper trader Dinev TSS EUR 3 mln The bourse will have two buildings spanning on 17,000 square metres, including a duty free storehouse
June 16 Takeover Bulgarian drug wholesaler Libra German pharmaceuticals company PHOENIX n/a Libra, which claims about 20% market share on the Bulgarian drug distribution market, supplies drugs to some 3,000 pharmacies in the country and with a staff of 560 people, increased its turnover by some 54% on the year to 200 EUR 102 in 2004.
June 16 Construction of Bulgaria's second nuclear power plant A 2,000 MW nuclear power plant near the Danube town of Belene Enel, Italy EUR 2.7 bn total cost of the project Enel is interested in financing the construction. Bulgaria launched a tender to pick a contractor. So far two candidates - the Czech Skoda and a consortium of Russian Atomstroyexport, French Framatome and German Siemens - have bought tender documents for the Belene project.
Deals, contracts, tenders and outsourcing for a total value of more than BGN 2 mln. and projects of strategic interest to Bulgaria
With the contribution of SeeNews (published by AII Data Processing Ltd) and Rivas
GOVERNMENT AND EU | REAL ESTATE AND FINANCE | EU TOPICS
Date Subject Institution Comment
June 21 Sofia Car Salon scores unprecedented 200 sales per day The annual Sofia Auto Salon 2005 The most preferred cars at the expo were the French Peugeot models, followed by the Japanese Toyota, German Volkswagen and the French Citroen.
June 21 Bulgaria's Black Sea property market slows down Real estate brokers Both Bulgaria's and foreign buyers are awaiting for the results of the June 25 elections in the country.
June 21 The booming business activity in Bulgaria and Romania, southeast Europe's investment hotspot in the past few years, requires urgent reforms in their judiciary to ensure fair market competition World Bank Generally the bank said that courts were underperforming throughout Eastern and Central Europe and Central Asia.
June 21 Austrian EVN's Bulgarian Power Distribution Unit '04 profit up 35% Bulgaria's energy ministry Bulgarian power distributor Stara Zagora, which the Austrian energy utility EVN bought last year, posted a pre-tax profit of EUR 11 mln
June 21 U.S. Acid & Fertilizers' Bulgarian unit to raise sales by 40% in four years The Bulgarian chemical fertiliser producer Agropolychim, a unit of U.S. Acid & Fertilizers LLC The company would spend some $30 mln in the next 3 to 4 years on investment projects, boosting the annual output capacity by some 30%, and will spend another $20 mln to complete its environment investment programme, which includes the construction of a wastewater treatment plant near Bulgaria's northeastern town of Devnya, some 30 kilometres from the Black Sea port of Varna, where the company is based.
June 21 Private telco launches low-cost int'l calls Orbitel, Bulgaria Business model of pre-paid international telephone calls at the attractive price of 0.08 euro cents per minute
June 20 Bulgaria Q1 GDP up 6.0% Y/Y National Statistics Office Q1 2005 GDP is EUR 4.42 bn, higher than the preliminary 4.5% rise recorded in the same period of 2004
June 20 Bulgaria delays 510 mln euro sale of two of its coal-fired power plants to Russian RAO UES Privatisation Agency The delay was made on the request of the buyer. The two plants located in the Blacks Sea port of Varna and the Danube port of Ruse and burn mostly imported coal.
June 20 Rise in housing costs in Bulgaria in 2004 was the highest worldwide BIS and WJ Bank for International Settlements and Wall Street Journal
June 20 Bulgaria resumes talks with Israeli Elbit Systems on helicopters upgrade Defence officials Bulgaria picked a consortium formed by Elbit and U.S. Lockheed Martin in December 2004 to repair its ageing fleet of Soviet-made Mi-17 and Mi-24 helicopters. In March, however, Bulgaria broke off talks with Elbit, saying the company had failed to meet some of the qualification criteria. Project is estimated at EUR 122 mln
June 17 Bulgaria invites bidders for construction of EUR 148.5 mln motorway Regional Development Ministry Bulgaria negotiated 111.4 million euro financing for the Lyulin motorway project under the EU's pre-accession programme ISPA last year. The country will contribute 37.1 million euro of its own to the project.
June 17 Bulgarian insurance market grows 30% Y/Y in Q1 2005 Financial Supervision Commission Insurance companies raised EUR 135.9 mln in premiums in the first three months of the year, up from EUR 103 mln in the same period last year
June 16 Curbs on bank lending to boost Bulgaria's corporate bond market Bankers Bulgaria's central bank has imposed a series of restrictions since the summer of 2004 to slow the growth in bank lending to 30% this year from some 50% in both 2003 and 2004.
June 16 Hungarian low-cost Wizz Air to start flying to Bulgaria in September Transport Minister Nikolai Vasilev Bulgaria is not a member of the European Union's open skies agreement. The country maintains bilateral pacts with EU member states, under which airlines must seek flight permission from the authorities of the respective country.
June 15 Bulgarian Moststroy wins EUR 4 mln tender to build road to the new passenger terminal at Sofia International Airport Transport Minister Nikolai Vasilev The Austrian subsidiary of German-based Strabag is scheduled to complete the construction of the new pessenger terminal, the airport's second, by August 31. The value of the project is EUR 112.2 mln
June 15 Bulgarian Computer Market Grows by 48% in Q1 2005 Market intelligence and advisory firm IDC Hewlett Packard was the market leader in Bulgaria with a market share of 15.8%, followed by Fujitsu Siemens Computers with a share of 9% and IBM with 4.4%.
News and events important for investors related to the Bulgarian legislation, government and EU policy, financial and real estate sectors.
With the contribution of SeeNews (published by AII Data Processing Ltd) and Rivas

Bulgarian Institute for Management and Technology (BIMT) was officially opened

BIMT was officially opened with the launch of two joint masters programs between La Salle University and New Bulgarian University (NBU)

Founders of BIMT: Bulgarian Information and Communication Technology Cluster, Foundation Law and Internet, Rivas consultancy think-tank

Programs goals:
-To create an efficient bridge between universities, companies and public organizations
-To develop a technological platform for research and development providing support to new companies and developing qualified human resources for companies
-Current master’s programs: Master in Project Management (MPM) and Master in Information Technology Management (MITM)
-Executive master’s programs coming soon: Master in information technology securities (MITS) and Master in networks and telecommunications services (MXTS)

Teaching body: balanced mix of La Salle and NBU professors and Spanish and Bulgarian leading professionals
Working language: English
Program duration: 1 calendar year = 3 semesters
Class size: maximum 25 people
Class schedule: weekends and occasional evenings (12 hours/week)
Accreditation: from La Salle University and New Bulgarian University
Tuition fee: EUR 5000

38% of the Bulgarian companies are interested in IT master degree programs for their employees, shows the ESTAT survey, that was carried out among the CEOs of 4000 Bulgarian SMEs and 400 leading Bulgarian companies in the ICT sector. According to the survey, 85% of the CEOs consider training and additional education of their staff to be a worth investment in business.
Showcase of important issues, deals, and events.
With the contribution of Rivas
June 22, 2005