Translate to:

 

The President of the Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry participated in the International Forum of Southeast Europe, held in Sofia on 24 and 25 November. He made a presentation during the round table discussion on “Successful business models and investment projects in a turbulent economic environment.”

“BCCI as a business association with over 52 000 members, representing more than 100 sectorial organizations and 28 regional chambers of commerce, tries to be an indicator for the signals and problems of companies”, said Tsvetan Simeonov and shared that despite the difficulties Bulgarian economy is still functioning. “This is indicated by the annual classification of Bulgarian companies made by the Chamber for the 13th consecutive year, on the basis of more than 5 000 financial reports. The participants in this year’s classification form 81.5% of the country’s GDP.

Tsvetan Simeonov announced the results of a survey conducted by BCCI about the attitudes and expectations of Bulgarian entrepreneurs about the business climate next year. Asked what the economic and business environment in the country would be in 2012, most companies gave a positive response /57.2%/. There is a slight decrease in investment expectations as compared to previous year. The survey signals of problems met by companies in their everyday work – slow administrative servicing, lack of skilled labour force, corruption, unfair competition, etc. Bulgarian business requires better work of the public administration, more qualified employees, introduction of the e-government, elimination of the need to submit information which is already available in the institutions, delegation of rights from the state to NGOs and sectorial organizations, curbing and elimination of corruption, independent judiciary system, etc. Besides, they call for simplification of administrative procedures for application and management of projects under EU programmes.

BCCI will soon announce the detailed results of the survey. They will also be made available to the respective institutions. Specific steps, graded by importance, will be proposed, which need to be adopted within a specific period of time. 

According to Tsvetan Simeonov, Bulgaria is a good place to do business – an opinion shared by our partners in the Chambers of Commerce and Industry of neighbouring countries, but there is still room for improvement. 

25.11.2011