more news...

A congress of the International Ski Instructors Association (ISIA) took place in Borovets winter resort on June 4.

Representatives of 22 countries took part in the forum, BGNES sport agency reported. Delegates got acquainted with the winter sport opportunities that Bulgarian resorts offered.

During the final press conference ISIA members said Borovets and Bansko, Bulgaria?s leading winter resorts, could host international competitions.

Infrastructure in Bansko was as good as the one in Vancouver, ISIA deputy president Normand Lapierre said.

ISIA representatives were not members of the International Olympic Committee, which deprived them of the chance to support Bulgaria?s bid for the 2014 Winter Olympics, Lapierre said.

Conducting Winter Olympics required good organisation skills apart from the proper infrastructure, ISIA representatives said. Bulgaria needed to host other major championships beforehand to accumulate experience.

DeTeImmobilien, part of the Deutsche Telekom Gruppe, is considering offering property management services in Bulgaria, said Norbert Woyciechowski, head of international activities. The company executive said the Bulgarian market is showing great potential with the increased supply of office, hotel and shopping center buildings. DeTeImmobilien is already doing business in Hungary and Slovakia

Austrian companies are willing to invest about EUR 1 B in the building of malls and underground parking lots in Sofia, media reported.

There is wide interest in the capital, Sofia's chief architect Petar Dikov said for 24 Hours daily newspaper.

Dikov visited the Vienna Real expo, where Sofia had a stand for the first time ever. Coming back Dikov explained that many Austrian companies were also vividly looking into the possibilities of building housing in new Sofia neighborhoods.

Some investors, however, are holding back because there isn't enough statistical data concerning the real estate market in the capital, Dikov believes.

In the meantime it became clear that there are four projects for the construction of parking lots downtown Sofia that will soon be opened for concession.

Dikov said the Municipality is actively working for solving the parking problem in the centre of the capital city.

Anyone who has bought property in Bulgaria will tell you that the prices are so low, it is impossible to lose, Matthew Brunwasser wrote in an article for International Herald Tribune.

Prices will continue to rise. The only uncertainty is by how much. And how long, the article continues.

The Balkan country already has had 12 years of increases. And the National Statistical Institute reported in January that the average sales price per square meter for residential properties in Bulgarian cities had gone up 36.6 percent in the previous year.

But residential prices in Sofia still average only EUR 600, or USD717, per square meter. That is much less than the EUR 750 average per square meter in Bratislava, Slovakia; EUR 850 in Bucharest and EUR 1,500 in Prague, according to the National Real Property Association of Bulgaria.

Those numbers have pushed Bulgaria squarely into the real estate spotlight, attracting West Europeans lured by the current hot place for vacation homes and, to a lesser extent, for investment. And real estate agencies from small European countries like Ireland and Malta have opened offices in Bulgaria in an effort to expand their businesses.

Foreigners were involved in 23 percent of the 220,000 property deals registered in Bulgaria in 2005, transactions that totaled more than EUR 4 billion, according to the property association. The year before they generated 18 percent of all sales, or EUR 3.36 billion.

Overall, real estate is one of the fastest growing sectors in the national economy, which grew by 5.2 percent in 2005. Observers say that while the foreign interest certainly has not hurt, the country itself is producing much of the change.

The new International Bank Account Number (IBAN) becomes effective in Bulgaria as of Monday, June 5.

The banking system has taken all necessary measures to ensure non-problematic switch to the new code. As of June 5 only the new IBAN will be effective and the bank clients will be able to make remittances only from accounts in a IBAN format.

The new bank account numbers include 22 symbols instead of ten and feature letters along with the figures. Bulgaria's banks started replacing the numbers of more than six million accounts used by companies and citizens on March 1.

IBAN is an international standard for numbering bank accounts. It was originally adopted by the European Committee for Banking Standards, and was later adopted as ISO 13616:1997.

The IBAN always starts with a two-digit country code, which is followed by a two-digit control part, a reference to the bank (the bank's local code) and the beneficiary's domestic account number.

Usage of the IBAN reduces the number of possible delays and errors upon making international payments, because the bank sending the payment is able to check the correctness of the account number (IBAN) entered by the client before the payment is sent out of the bank. Thus, usage of the IBAN allows for quicker transfer of funds and future reduction of service fees related to international payments.

Bulgaria is the 43rd country to implement the IBAN bank account format.

Bulgaria has placed 13th in the offshoring environment rankings prepared by research and advisory firm Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

The rankings are topped by India. China and the Czech republic round off the top 3.

The ranking score of each offshoring destination is based on 9 separate measures: proximity, political and security risk, macroeconomic stability, regulatory environment, tax regime, labour regulation, labour costs, labour skills and infrastructure.

Although India will continue to enjoy strong growth as companies expand offshoring activities, EIU argues that the future of offshoring will not be a race to the bottom on costs.

Locations closer to home - nearshoring operations in Central and Eastern Europe and North Africa, will be a key focus of expansion for companies based in Europe, said EIU.

European companies need shared-service centres that can operate in European languages - not just in English. But India or other rock-bottom locations cannot support operations in anything but English.

Until recently, Bulgaria was mostly known for software development, but Hewlett-Packard this year set up a high-level IT support centre for the Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa region, which aims to employ 1,000 by 2007, said EIU.

'Our centres in Central and Eastern Europe provide services through highly skilled, multi-lingual resources at lower cost than in Western Europe,' said Jan Zadak, HP?s vice president and managing director EMEA.

Kaliakra Invest, a Bulgaria-British joint venture, will invest 60 mln euro in the construction of a holiday complex near cape Kaliakra, on the Black Sea coast, said the company's manager Ivan Stanchev at Monday's ground-breaking ceremony.

The 28 ha Green Coast holiday complex should be ready in 3.5 years, placing on the market 1,400 new apartments.

The first 1.5-year stage of the project will involve the development of a 8.5 ha lot at a cost of 32 mln euro.

Some of the apartments, with some 400 of them to be handed over during the first implementation stage, have already been sold off-plan.

The guests of the complex, perched above the shoreline at a height that varies between 50 to 80 m, will be able to take one of two 16-person elevators down to the beach.

Green Coast will also feature a heli pad, a 200-bed hotel and a spa center.

The vicinity of the pristine beachfront area to the Kaliakra nature reserve was the key selling point for the British real estate agency that joined the project, said Stanchev.

Stanchev recently announced that Interlink BG, another Bulgarian-British joint venture in which he participates, has kicked off the 17 mln euro Windows to Paradise vacation complex near the village of Topola, in the Kavarna coastal area

Increasing number of Welsh, buying property abroad, have showed interest in the Bulgarian real estate sector, icwales.co.uk reported.

This high interest in the past seven years has turned Bulgaria into a property hotspot, the website reported.

Low property prices, compared to the ones in other countries, as well as the country?s expected EU membership, raise the appeal of local property, real estate agents said.

At the same time prices are on the rise, because of the steady demand. Only during the past year property became 47.5 per cent more expensive on the average. Values would increase more than twice this year, property agents said.

The country?s resorts have attracted increasing numbers of foreign tourists, as well, icwales.co.uk said. Over the past two years, the number of tourists from EU member states has increased by nearly 90 per cent.

Foreigners, who previously purchased property in Spain and the UK are now turning to Bulgarian resorts, agents said.

According to World Trade Organisation prognoses by 2010 Bulgaria would be visited by at least 20 million tourists annually. The results of the research present the country as one of the most promising international tourism destinations, the website reported.

Only in the next months, 80 000 British citizens are expected to look for a second home in the country. Most would use the property for short breaks and vacations, icwales.co.uk said.

Bulgaria's flag carrier announced the launch of summertime flights from the Black Sea city of Burgas to London.

Prices for two-way tickets start from EUR 199. The flights will be serviced twice a week - on Tuesdays and Fridays.

All passengers aboard the maiden flight Burgas-London-Burgas on May 30 will be treated to a bottle of Bulgarian wine with compliments from the company.

Bulgaria Air planes will depart from the Black Sea airport at 14.20 and will take off back from London at 17.20. The planes will touch down in Burgas at 22.40 local time.

"Bulgaria Air new offers are in line with the company's policy to give its clients convenient flights to new and preferred destinations," Zlatin Sarastov, CEO of Bulgaria Air, commented.

The flight to London comes to meet the growing demand by Britons who plan to spend their summer holidays along Bulgaria's coast or visit the country with the purpose of buying property.

At the end of next month the airline company will enrich the summer schedule of Burgas airport with flights to Madrid and Dublin. Flights to Madrid will be serviced only on Wednesdays, those to Dublin - on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.

The Bulgarian flag carrier will fly from Varna airport to Milan as of July 5. It is already conducting flights from Varna to Amsterdam and Madrid.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is planning to invest an average of 300 million euro in Bulgaria for each of the next five years.

This was announced at the EBRD annual meeting that took place in London on May 21-22.

Under the bank?s new five-year strategy, 550 million euro every year will go to Bulgaria and Romania. The EBRD?s interest in the two countries is dictated mainly by their expected accession to the European Union in 2007.

The EBRD wants to strengthen its presence in Bulgaria and it will create a fund for co-financing projects by Bulgarian municipalities, Finance Minister Plamen Oresharski said.

As the leader of the Bulgarian delegation to the forum, Oresharski met on May 21 with EBRD president Jean Lemierre and other representatives of the bank.

After the meeting, Oresharski said that EBRD may give Bulgaria a loan for the Transit Roads 5 project for building first- and second-class roads in the country, a task worth 380 million euro. The previous four phases of the Transit Roads programme already saw a lot of funding coming from the EU, mainly for rehabilitation of Bulgarian roads but also for the building of new ones.

?Bulgaria sees the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the EBRD as key partners in the country?s preparation for absorption of EU funds,? Oresharski said.

The EBRD strategy on Bulgaria includes the key components on which the Bulgarian side insisted, he said.

They include support for municipalities ? not so much in terms of financing, which, as a rule, is little (about 15-20 per cent), and not so much about co-financing as in terms of project design, according to Oresharski.

Financing from the EIB and EBRD is treated on an equal footing as contracting loans from local banks, which is why the two institutions are more valuable as consultants than as a source of financing, he said.

The EBRD started its annual meeting on May 21 with the launch of a five-year plan to switch investments from new EU member states to South East Europe (SEE) and Russia, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported on May 21.

?Our bank will intensify the move of our activities to the east and to the south where new challenges, new difficulties but for sure new opportunities are beckoning,? Steven Kaempfer, EBRD acting first vice president, said in opening remarks to delegates, quoted by AFP.

The EBRD operates across 27 countries in SEE, the Baltic states and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

Under the new strategy, the bank hopes to reduce by 2010 its presence in eight of the new European Union member states ? the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.

Instead, the EBRD will re-allocate more resources to Russia and to SEE where countries including Bulgaria and Romania are candidating for EU membership.

?This strategic vantage point envisages for the first time that a number of our countries in the next five years will graduate. That means the job of the transition to market economy and democracy will be complete,? Kaempfer said.

The EBRD, which was founded in 1991 to assist the transition of former communist nations to market economies, invests just under four billion euro each year across the region in which it operates.

?We expect that in coming years substantially all of this will be to the east and to the south,? Kaempfer said.

The EBRD announced at its annual meeting that it was launching its Sustainable Energy Initiative in a bid to address the issue of energy waste and security, climate change and the need for cleaner sources of energy.

Under the initiative, the bank will invest up to 1.5 billion euro in energy efficiency and renewable and clean energy projects over the next three years.