Bulgaria's President, Govt Move to Relocate Institutions to Provinces

Bulgaria's government is moving to relocate some of its state institutions outside of Sofia. Map from worldofmaps.net

Bulgaria's President Rosen Plevneliev has supported an initiative of Finance Minister Simeon Djankov to move the headquarters of some state institutions outside of the capital Sofia.

According to Djankov's idea, seven state agencies will be moved to other Bulgarian cities. If this "pilot" project is successful, some ministries will be sent to the provinces, too.

The Finance Minister's brainchild is part of his "administrative reform efforts", and was commended by Plevneliev Thursday, during a business breakfast in Sofia.

The President explained that the rationale of the moving around of institutions will be to locate them closer to the industries for which they are responsible. He noted that the state agencies for agriculture, for example, should be sitting comfortably in Sofia.

He further said he was puzzled by the fact that the Bulgarian State Agency for the fisheries is also in Sofia instead of the Black Sea cities of Varna or Burgas.

Plevneliev further spoke in favor of setting up clusters all over the countries, with Ruse and Plovdiv being suitable for agriculture clusters, Plovdiv and Stara Zagora – for clusters in logistics, Sofia – for ICT and health industries, and Ruse, Burgas, Varna, Dobrich, and Plovdiv – for food production and tourism.

He promised that Bulgaria's educational system will be changed in order to produce specialists for the future clusters, and that the country needs more engineers, and agricultural specialists.

Plevneliev stressed as part of his agenda the improvement of energy efficiency, saying it would improved the wealth of the people in Bulgaria since 92% of their assets are in real estate.

"We hold the world record – Bulgaria has 3.1 million households who own 3.4 million residential properties," he said, adding that a state energy efficiency program worth EUR 1.5 B will increase people's wealth by EUR 15 B.

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