Bulgarian Employers Present Top 3 List of Obstructions to Businesses

Tsvetan Simeonov, Chair of the Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, photo by BGNES

The Chair of the Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry listed key obstructions faced by businesses, including red tape, constantly changing laws and limited access to funding.

Tsvetan Simeonov's top 3-list was presented at a press conference on Friday of representative of national employers' associations.

The press conference was organized to present a joint list of priorities and demands of the Bulgarian Industrial Association (BIA), the Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) and the Bulgarian Industrial Capital Association (BICA).

Simeonov, as cited by news.bg, warned that the BCCI would reconsider its membership in the National Council for Tripartite Cooperation if the non-payment of social security contributions by employers was listed as an offence in the new Penal Code.

He insisted that the economy would not gain pace amid the existing conditions, taking into account the current state of domestic and foreign investments.

BIA Chair Bozhidar Danev emphasized that Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev had vowed upon assuming office to veto any law which had reached the stage of parliamentary debates without an impact assessment, stressing that they had not been provided such a paper.

He added that Bulgarian laws required a repeat impact assessment every six months, which had not happened so far.

Danev also expressed BIA's disapproval of the fact that Bulgarian municipalities applied different tariffs for issuing permits, adding that the Sofia Municipality used different tariffs for issuing building permits for the different regions of Sofia.

As regards Bulgaria's economic development in 2014, employers expressed negative expectations, the only optimistic forecast being that of BICA Chair Vasil Velev.

The representatives of employers' associations presented a list of key priorities in the sphere of business environment, including the reduction and simplification of the regulatory burden, the mandatory preparation of impact assessment of all laws and progress in the adoption of e-government, insisting on the difference between e-government and electronic services.

Employers in Bulgaria also expressed hopes for a successful conclusion of the past programming period and the negotiation of simplified and standardized procedures for the preparation, submission and evaluation of projects in the next programming period (2014-2020), as well as the swift and fair settlement of disputes in the cases of financial corrections.