390 million leva have been invested in the state-owned industrial zones

More than 390 million leva have been invested in all of the industrial zones in our country, that was reported at the end of the last year. The created work positions are over 2100 and more than 130 Bulgarian and foreign companies have received support for development of their business projects in the industrial zones. That pointed out the executive director of NCIZ Antoaneta Bares in an interview for the “Standard’’ newspaper.

She mentioned all of the newest terrains, which NCIZ has added to its portfolio in 2017: estates in Kurdzhali with surface covering 95 decares of land, the Economic Zone Sofia-Bozhurishte with its extension of 115 decares of land, also new terrains will be added to the Industrial and logistic park -Burgas. ‘’We – together with the major of Municipality of Burgas, intend to turn the previous airport in Ravnetz into industrial zone on the basis of ad hoc projects, claimed Mrs Bares. An investor has already been found and now further discussions are taking place.

One of the main tasks for NCIZ in 2018 is to add more industrial zones and terrains to its portfolio, said the executive director of the company and explained that the signed memorandums for cooperation with a lot of the municipalities in Bulgaria -Varna, Burgas, Sandanski, Vidin, Lovech, Dupnitsa embodies the mutual work towards that. New plots of land have been identified in Sofia, Pernik and Targovishte.

The investors are looking for key location, infrastructure and available workforce. NCIZ offers all of these advantages, but after all we should not forget that Bulgaria is a suitable place for investments. The stable economic and political situation in the country, along with the range of industrial terrains, the capacity and the great number of intelligent young people, studying in Bulgaria as well as abroad are a pre-condition for launching more investment projects, explained Antoaneta Bares for the newspaper.

One of the challenges, which NCIZ faces, is connected with the unlogic appeals against procurement processes and the other one is about the slow administrative service and the long period of time for receiving all of the papers needed for the start of an investment project in Bulgaria.

‘’We work towards solving these two issues. We are grateful to the Ministry of Economy for working actively for reducing the administrative weight. The aim is to reduce the number of documents, especially those that the state issues itself, commented the executive director of NCIZ.

Mrs Bares mentioned also the FastTracking Success project, which brought her the prize ‘’Golden heart’’. The program is about professional preparation of young people studying at university by supporting them through permanent employment and internships in foreign companies, co- working with NCIZ. The purpose of the project is to prevent the gap between demand and supply of workers which is one of the challenges at the moment.

‘’We are trying to provide all of the necessary information to the investors, especially to the foreign ones, regarding the availability of workers. When we start working with a particular company, the question that follows next is where they could find employees for their business- we want to be helpful with providing information’’, claimed Mrs Bares.

At the moment NCIZ is cooperating with some of the leading Bulgarian universities and their career centres- Sofia University, University of National and World Economy, Technical University in Sofia, University of Forestry; a memorandum with University of Mining and Geology, with universities in Burgas and Varna, with the University of Plovdiv and in the near future with professional high schools.

Except working on its portfolio, another priority of the company is to lay the foundation of the infrastructure in most of the zones, so that if an investor decides to launch a project in one of the industrial zones, there will be an already built infrastructure which will help the immediate implementation of that project.

‘’The other important initiative suggested by NCIZ and the Ministry of Economy is to change the regulations- more importantly the legislative ones, that means that the status of territories of that type would be regulated. The question is how that will be achieved – whether it will be with new legislative Act or through changes in a current one, but that is a matter of law’’, said lastly Mrs Bares.