The week: A map of industrial brilliance

These awards highlight the key role of both SME and large companies in driving Bulgaria's economic growth and resilience in the face of global challenges. While large companies play a major role in shaping the economic landscape of entire regions, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) bring diversity to the economy, helping it stay agile and competitive.

For this reason, there is now for the first time a winner in the SME category - it is Teletek Electronics, a Sofia-based manufacturer of fire alarm systems.

What's impressive is the map and breadth of the achievements on display.

This year's Factory of the Year competition (organized in partnership with Plovdiv Municipality and Trakia Tech) reveals that automation and robotics are now the standard in Bulgaria's industrial sector. More and more companies are embracing digital technologies, while internal employee training is becoming a mandatory practice (there are amazing perks there - from a 16 week parental leave for new fathers to 5 paid visits to a therapist). All these efforts are making production more efficient, paving the way for continued business growth in the country.

This year 20 companies participated, with a strong representation from the machinery sector. A significant portion of the candidates came from Southern Bulgaria, while one-quarter were from Sofia. After the first evaluation phase, top 7 companies reached the final, including the two winners as well as BTL Industries from Plovdiv, VITTE Automotive from Ruse, Decibel from Blagoevgrad, and Sofia-based companies Melexis and Festo Production.

Those are 7 out of hundreds of factories producing everything in all parts of the country. There is another point here. Many of those are foreign entities. Bulgaria has benefited immensely from globalization. The added value of foreign companies here is 15.5 billion euro, which amounts to 31% of all added value by the businesses. They also employ more than 400,000 people. In a world where Donald Trump preaches tariffs and Russia preaches isolation, Bulgaria should preach what makes sense for it: keeping itself open for business.

This newsletter was co-written by Martin Dimitrov

1. Politics this week:

So we will just skip the meaningless squabbles and additional votes that failed to produce a speaker on ten consecutive occasions over the past month. Move on, nothing to see here!

*A few hours after this newsletter was published, the MPs finally managed to elect a speaker - BSP's Prof Natalia Kiselova - from the eleventh attempt!

Radev to the rescue? Maybe later.

The only potentially interesting political quote this week came from President Rumen Radev who told university students during a public lecture that popular trust in the current political mode is "running out" quite fast, although he did not add if he might try doing something to "fix" it. Watch this space, however.

But maybe, TikTok to the rescue?

Given the gridlocked political process, the allegedly nearly exhausted trust in the current governance model and Romania's recent experience with social media influence on elections, the future populists have an additional reason to celebrate.

According to a Capital weekly inquiry, Bulgaria ranks high among the most prolific users of TikTok. According to the Datareportal analytics platform, as of September 2024, the average time spent by users on the short video app is 38 hours and 58 minutes per month. This places Bulgaria sixth in the world!

It gets better

Bulgarian TikTok users rank even higher when looking at the number of times they log into the app. According to the survey, we are ranked third in the world in this indicator with an average of 397.1 visits per month. Only Chile (397.3) and Israel (450.1) outstrip us in the ranking. So - look out for our own TikTok-powered savior, coming soon!

A plague of distrust

In the last two weeks, traditional and social media has been flooded with emotional videos and pictures of shepherds from the Rhodope mountains crying over their flocks that have fallen victims to a silent deadly small ruminant plague. Although about 1,700 animals of five related owners would need to be put down (and they will receive more than 700,000 levs in compensation), the issue has been blown out of proportion because of two interwoven factors.

These are populist politicians and distrust in state institutions. And while it is obvious why radicals would jump on the bandwagon of such a tragedy befalling people and animals, the second issue is much more problematic. Simply put, nobody really trusts the Bulgarian Food Safety Agency (BABH). For years, it has been the object of scandals, nepotistic schemes linked to privatizing sanitary control on the border with Turkey or allowing low-quality cheese enter the market. So the public and the shepherds simply find zero reasons to believe BABH is not singling out farmers and that they are being "framed" by someone with more power. And it's hard to blame them for the lack of trust.

2. Economy:

Last Friday, just after we sent you the newsletter, the European Commission announced that Bulgaria will not receive by the end of the year 1.2 billion levs, or 653 million euro, under the second payment of the Recovery and Sustainability Plan of the EU. The reason for the suspension of the payment is the failure to meet eight milestones and one target set in the plan, including in the areas of energy; anti-corruption and public procurement, the Commission said in its announcement. Specifically in the energy sector, the issues are over the liberalization of the retail energy market, increasing electricity production from renewables, and the Climate Neutrality Roadmap (what happens to the coal power plants in the country).

Figures:

The revised, lower forecast for the country's GDP growth in 2025, according to the National Bank (BNB). Previously, it was expected that the Bulgarian economy would grow 3.2% next year.

1.9%

The budget deficit for November, which shrank by 300 million levs to 3.7 billion levs after a sudden jump in October, according to preliminary data of the Ministry of Finance.

3. Business

The Bulgarian platform that allows airline customers to submit claims for compensation for delayed and cancelled flights is now owned by the German segment leader AirHelp. The price of the deal and the future plans of the ClaimCompass team were not made public.

Banking

The largest bank now allows individual clients using its mobile app to invest in 12 funds of leading international asset managers, including Pimco, Amundi, Fidelity, J.P. Morgan, Pictet, Allianz, Capital Group and Blackrock funds. The minimum purchase amount is EUR 20 and the maximum EUR 20 thousand. The offer aims at people investing small amounts regularly.

Lottery

The company behind the fledgling online lottery igra.bg raised 1.3 million levs out of a 3 million levs target in its stock market debut, despite bold promises and forecasts. The founders of the company believe that there is a market niche for 400 million levs.

4. Watch out for:

As we've written in the past, Bulgarian companies and public institutions have launched a series of worrying SLAPP cases aimed at whistleblowers. So far, very few succeed, but they still manage to make the lives of activists hell. This is the case with nurse Natalya Stancheva, who was sued by the Kozloduy nuclear power station for exposing illegal practices in the plant. Despite the power plant withdrawing its claims, Stancheva remains 15,000 levs in debt because the Supreme Court of Cassation refused to recognise the full legal costs incurred for her defense, the Association of European Journalists - Bulgaria warned this Thursday. They are collecting money in support of her cause on their website here.

Stefan Dechev

But that's not the only outrageous SLAPP case this week. On the same day, it turned out that the South-West University Neofit Rilski had filed three lawsuits for the outrageous total sum of 650,000 levs against its former employee, historian Prof Stefan Dechev, Svobodna Evropa wrote. A few months ago, Dechev exposed the university's tradition of issuing fake diplomas.

Biser Dzhambazov and Orlin Rusev

Two of the six Bulgarians on trial in the UK for spying for Russia admitted to plans to kidnap Bulgarian investigative journalist (and Oscar-winner for "Navalny") Hristo Grozev. But one element of the operation was notoriously repeated by local media - the plan to set a "honeytrap" for Grozev in the form of 30-year old hairdresser and (the British prosecutor on the case quoting Dzhambazov) "real sexy bitch" Vanya Gaberova, who would tease him and potentially record an exposing sexual video with the journalist.

Date:

Mind you, this isn't something the state paid for - the America for Bulgaria Foundation paid around 16 million levs for the construction of the Basilica museum and tons of volunteers (alongside some of the people writing this newsletter) helped for its unearthing a few years ago