InvestBulgaria Agency to Lure Foreign Investors with Proactive Marketing

Borislav Stefanov is the new director of the InvestBulgaria Agency. Photo by karieri.bg

The InvestBulgaria Agency is starting a project for proactive international marketing and is putting forth legislative changes in order to attract foreign investors, its new director, Borislav Stefanov told Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency) in an exclusive interview.

Stefanov spoke with Novinite.com during the recent “Banks Investment Money” forum in Sofia, only two weeks after he was appointed in charge of the Agency, which is Bulgaria’s main governmental body in charge of facilitating relations with foreign investors.

He announced that an EU-funded project is going to allow the InvestBulgaria Agency to become proactive by targeting prospective investors in certain foreign countries rather that just answer to inquiries by foreign companies that care to contact the institution.

The new director told Novinite.com that the first tenders for selecting consultants for economic research and marketing strategies were going to take place within several weeks.

“Government tenders take about three months by law, after which we plan to have a list of industries with a great potential for development and for attracting investments in Bulgaria in another three months. This does not necessarily mean the industries that are currently forming the backbone of the Bulgarian economy, they cold be industries which do not even exist in Bulgaria yet, but show great potential. Our goal is to identify the ones where we can attract foreign capital quickly and efficiently,” Stefanov explained adding that the essence of the project will be realized in 2011-2013 with media advertising campaigns and investment forums in selected target countries around the world.

“One of the things that I am going to emphasize in the work of the InvestBulgaria Agency will be focusing relatively quickly on proactive marketing,” he stated while making it clear that the institution will need some time in order to recruit and/or develop the staff with the necessary skills for cold calling foreign companies.

In his words, one of the new ways to promote Bulgaria as an investment destination is to expand the Agency’s work by reaching out to medium-sized companies from abroad.

Stefanov also explained his institution was putting forth amendments to Bulgaria’s Investment Encouragement Act in order to expand and improve the benefits currently offered by the Bulgarian state to foreign investors.

“We have proposed the introduction of a new category of investment projects. These so called “priority projects” will be investments, which create a significant number of new jobs and result in the inflow of a large amount of foreign direct investment to the country... At the same time, state support for these projects will be more substantial – there will be a number of new measures, one of which envisions direct financial support for priority projects,” said the Agency director.

Commenting on the recently announced data that Bulgaria had a negative FDI balance in the first quarter of 2010, Stefanov said the net investment outflow was the result of company operations that led to the transfer of money abroad. He pointed out that this development was appeared only in March, and does not appear to represent a trend. At the same time, he noted that an increasing number of foreign companies contributed with positive investment balances to the Bulgarian economy since the beginning of the year.

“The other positive indicator is that capital stock investments are increasing, and this is the most “classic” form of investment. This is when a foreign company opens a Bulgarian branch and invests money in equity. These investments are more traditional and easier to forecast; if we started to see an outflow of capital stock investments in Bulgaria, we would be a lot more worried,” stated the InvestBulgaria Agency director.

He emphasized the fact that the Bulgarian government wanted to attract industries with high surplus value but is also determined to welcome any kinds of foreign investments as it could not afford to be picky in that respect over the effects of the economic crisis.

Stefanov was appointed the Executive Director of the InvestBulgaria Agency on May 24, 2010, after his predecessor Stoyan Stalev quit the job.

Full Text of Novinite.com's Interview with the New Director of the InvestBulgaria Agency Borislav Stefanov READ HERE

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