Trace Holding is a reputable name in Bulgaria. The infrastructure company has been a feature of most big procurement here for well over a decade. They are also now becoming one in Romania.
The company is building a 30-km lot of the brand new highway between Ploesti and the Moldovan-Ukrainian border. They are also bidding for two other lots of new roads and for the Constanta city reconstruction project. Those competing for the tenders are, according to Gabriel Budescu from the Romanian road agency CNIR, exactly what Romania prizes: regional companies, able to build big projects.
Bulgaria and Romania took vastly different roads in the past decade. While Sofia was busy creating a local road-cartel, fueled by EU money and controlled by politicians, Bucharest decided to go into a corruption-cleaning frenzy. They jailed one of their big builders for stealing EU money and one Prime Minister there, too, for appointing another builder to a regulatory position in exchange for favors. This stopped Romania from having large projects (or large construction companies).
Now, the country is using Recovery and Resilience money to make up for lost time. They are, at this point, constructing over a 1000 km of highways simultaneously. This is the biggest construction site in Europe. And while they are late to the party (Romania is the last big European country to not have a fully developed infrastructure network), they are moving fast.
Consider this: Trace are finishing in Romania a 30km lot, signed in 2022 - so basically 2 years. The newly started highway project between Veliko Tarnovo and Ruse has a 40 km lot between the Danube city and Byala. This lot was also contracted back in 2022 and has a 6-year deadline. We're at the end of 2024 and the construction permits are not even signed.
If you are able to finish a project in 2 years, get it done, get the money and move on to the next, it's good for you and good for the contractor. And you will be free from worrying about appeasing politicians and sharing your profit with them (or the police knocking on your door when Delyan Peevski wants to get elected).
So a lot more Bulgarian companies are probably going to look to the other side of the Danube.
This newspaper is helped by Martin Dimitrov and Monika Varbanova
1. Politics this week:
Speaking of Peevski, his election "campaign" goes onIf you wonder why we've had so few political updates in the last few weeks, the reason is simple - there is effectively no election campaign in Bulgaria right now, except for one specific type: Delyan Peevski continues to pursue a vendetta against his former party members that remained loyal to MRF honorary chairman Ahmed Dogan.
There are several notable updates this week. In Sofia, Plovdiv and Kardzhali, different courts have pushed forward cases linked to key figures from the Dogan camp, now known as the Association for Rights and Freedoms (ARF), including the former mayors of Kardzhali Hassan Azis, the Mineralni Bani mayor Myumyn Iskander and the MP Dzheyhan Ibryamov.
The curious case of Ibryamov
As we reported last week, he was indicted for allegedly attempting to extort 100,000 levs in marked banknotes from Miroslav Todorov, who is mostly known for his role as a defendant in another high-profile anti-corruption case from a few months ago. The money would have allegedly gone on vote-buying before the next early election.
This is where the problems begin: according to the court proceedings, Ibryamov was the object of five different types of special intelligence surveillance tools that were used on him in the two weeks prior to his arrest. Then, however, he had parliamentary immunity as an acting MP, which means that the use of such tools against him is against the law, and the evidence collected should be void.
And here we are again: the Prosecutor General is up for election
You'd be forgiven for forgetting how this battle of the last 4 years of constant elections, re-elections, caretaker governments and so on started. But I will remind you: it started with the desire to change the Prosecutor General, controlled by Boyko Borissov and Delyan Peevski and to bring down the MRF corporation.
So we've done a full circle. We've voted again and again, in vain, as the same two people will control the new PG. On Thursday - the last possible day when the prosecutorial college of the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) had the right to propose nominations for the post - it unsurprisingly nominated only the acting Prosecutor General Borislav Sarafov for the post.
Sarafov's election will depend on the votes that Peevski and Borisov control in the SJC plenum.
2. Economy:
4 billion for road repairsAnother institution which hasn't moved in the past 4 years is the Road Infrastructure Agency (RIA). Two months ago, Capital weekly requested data under the Access to Public Information Act in order to deduce how much money was spent on each of the multi-year contracts for road maintenance in different districts around the country, along with the specific contractor and the dates the contracts were signed. The agency gave a somewhat detailed account - it has spent nearly 4 billion levs on repairs over the past five years. Yet it didn't specify where or how.
To put things in context
Since 2019, RIA has paid about four times more than in the transitional five years (2014-2019) for maintaining roads and highways around the country, for snow clearing, for new shoulders and markings. However, it is proving particularly difficult to understand exactly what this money has been spent on and which roads have been repaired, claiming it does not have this data in an orderly form - which is either a lie, or a huge problem.
Figures:
608 billion levsThe cumulative revenue of all firms in the country for 2023, which contracted for the first time in a decade by 0.95% compared to the previous year's.
1 billion lev
The sum that Sofia District Heating will soon owe to the public supplier Bulgargaz, unless urgent measures are taken.
200 million levs
The new emergency subsidy approved by the government after agricultural firms protested against alleged dumping by Ukrainian farmers. Half will go to farmers in primary agricultural production and producers of fruit and vegetables, oil rose, wine vines and tobacco, while the other half - to producers of cereals and oilseeds.
3. Business:
Real estateThe Danish real estate firm announced it is now the largest landlord in Sofia, owning six buildings with 280 apartments, mostly in the center. The company, backed by investors Vaekstkapital, aims to make a portfolio of 1,000 properties to sell to a large fund in the future.
Pharmaceuticals
The Bulgarian pharmaceutical company launched a deal to acquire a large portfolio of 14 types of medicines for cardiovascular diseases, prescription drugs against viral, hormonal, urological and gynecological drugs that have 68 marketing authorisations in 10 European markets.
5. Watch out for:
People:After disappearing from public life for a few months, the controversial former chief architect of Sofia headed the Regional Directorate of National Building Control of the capital city in a competition for which there was only one other candidate - who never really showed up to the interview. The appointment is not technically a conflict of interest, but it is problematic because he will actually control his own acts from the previous position he held.
Ludmila Petkova
The long-time administrator and current Finance Minister in the caretaker government is faced with the dubious honor of being the minister who will tell Bulgaria that the Recovery and Resilience plan is lost. Petkova met the commissioner in charge - Paolo Gentilioni and asked for a delay because the Parliament can't really do anything to vote in the necessary reforms (coal, corruption, personal bankruptcy - still the same). She didn't get a postponement and so now she doesn't really have a choice. After the elections she will either ask the deputies to vote on that, or call time on the whole charade.
Nayden Todorov
The Culture Minister admitted this week that at least 2 of the people in his ministry are involved in the siphoning of money from the theaters scandal, which exploded last week. "I can't even fire them", he said, leaving a phrase that is bound to reverberate in political satire for years.
Place:
ViennaNot for the beauty of it, but for the coldness. The Austrian capital is still the last remaining hurdle blocking Bulgaria and Romania's full Schengen entry. This week in Brussels the interior ministers of the EU discussed the possibility of enlarging, yet came to no conclusion, despite all but one state agreeing.
Institutions:
The public transport companies of SofiaTwo of the main companies operating the urban transit system of Sofia - the trolleybus and the bus companies, respectively, threatened strike action if they don't get a bonus system for their drivers immediately. This is the latest of many demands of the drivers, who have had an almost 150% pay rise since 2018, according to the deputy mayor for transport Iliya Pavlov.
Date:
5 NovemberThe pinkish glow of Aurora Borealis made another rare comeback in parts of Northern Bulgaria on Thursday evening.
Trace Holding is a reputable name in Bulgaria. The infrastructure company has been a feature of most big procurement here for well over a decade. They are also now becoming one in Romania.
The company is building a 30-km lot of the brand new highway between Ploesti and the Moldovan-Ukrainian border. They are also bidding for two other lots of new roads and for the Constanta city reconstruction project. Those competing for the tenders are, according to Gabriel Budescu from the Romanian road agency CNIR, exactly what Romania prizes: regional companies, able to build big projects.