Die EU Finanzmafia verweigert Bulgarien den Beitritt zum € Raum, weil man zuwenig Staatsschulden hat

The myth of the well-educated, cheap Bulgarian workforce is coming to an end, an analysis by the business association claims. Photo: Vassll Donev/EPA.

Foreign direct investment into Bulgaria has reached a rock-bottom level, falling tenfold from about nine billion euros at the time of Sofia’s EU accession in 2007 to 0.9 billion euro in 2017, the Bulgarian Industrial Association said in a report published on Tuesday.
The fall in FDI as part of the country’s GDP has been even more dramatic – from 28 per cent in 2007 to 2 per cent last year.
“We’ve reached a level at which remittances coming from Bulgarians who live abroad outperform foreign investors,” said Radosvet Radev, president of the Bulgarian Industrial Association.
“There is a total collapse of foreign investment in the country,” added Kamen Kolev, vice-president of the organisation.
Among the main reasons listed by Radev and Kolev are the loss of the comparative advantages of the Bulgarian business environment and the worsening image of the country due to perceived problems in the judiciary and the state administration.
Rusev noted that US President Donald Trump’s companies have gone bankrupt several times.
“With the procedures in place in Bulgaria, this would have been impossible for him to accomplish here,” he said, referring to the fact that court insolvency cases take up to three to four years in Bulgaria, freezing the assets of the companies during the process.
Corruption and the perception of corruption also plays a serious role, according to the industrialists.
“If you develop your business, you want to be sure that nobody will come stealing it,” Kolev said, adding that the Bulgarian judiciary does not ensure the complete upholding of private property rights, which deters investors.
European funds, domestic state investment in the form of public tenders paid for by the state budget and private domestic investment have filled the gap left by foreign businesses, according to the Industrial Association.
“The unique advantages of Bulgaria from the past are being shed one by one,” Kolev said.
“The myth of the cheap, well-trained and educated workforce is busted, there is a lot of legal unpredictability and the quality of the administrative service, especially in terms of electronic governance, was shown in the case of the company register crisis,” he added.
He was referring to an 18-day period in August when the company register, which should make decisions and documents regarding traders and foreign trading branches public, failed due to network issues.
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