News

During the last year alone, 1152 Englishmen have settled in Bulgaria, according to the report on the migration situation for 2005 that is to be discussed by the Cabinet today. They have received one-year residence permit. The number of foreigners settling in Bulgaria has increased by 49% compared to 2004.

Another Bulgarian coastal city will try to earn musical glory in the summer of 2006. Nessebar has attracted names like Eros Ramazotti, Simply Red, Nazareth and Pearl Jam.

Hungary's Wizz Air and Norway's Norwegian Air Shuttle will launch flights to Bulgarian coastal cities Varna and Bourgas, Dnevnik learned from the transport ministry.
Wizz Air, which started flying between Budapest and Sofia in late 2005, plans a Luton-Varna-Luton service from May. The low-cost carrier then plans to also add flights from Luton to Bourgas.
Fellow budget carrier Norwegian Air Shuttle will offer a weekly Oslo-Varna-Oslo service also from May 6. The carrier will also fly to Bourgas. Return fares will start from 143 euro.
Slovakia's SkyEurope is another no-frills carrier with plans to fly from Budapest to Varna and Bourgas. However, the company is yet to notify the flight schedule to the airport authorities. The service is expected to get underway on June 17.

Plovdiv, the second largest city in Bulgaria, will have its road infrastructure fully renovated, at a cost of EUR 25 M.
Many of the city's main roads are said to be in a poor condition, and there has been no major overhaul for decades.
By the end of the year alone, about EUR 9 M should be absorbed.
The city will use a credit from Raiffeisenbank, which has won a contest for the project, Investor.bg reported Tuesday.

National Roads Agency received numerous offers for two renovation of coastal roads, Darik Radio reported.Six companies presented their offers to renovate the road connecting the coastal towns of Kavarna, Balchik, Kranevo and the Golden Sands resort, Darik said. The section was 20.5 km long. The highest offer amounted to 4.7 million euro and the lowest, to 3.7 million euro.

French and Italian companies specialising in congress tourism showed interest in buying Plovdiv International Fair exhibition centre, the fair's executive director Yordan Radev said.Radev told 24 Chassa newspaper that over the past few years the fair attracted many foreign companies as it was the largest exhibition centre in South-Eastern Europe. He predicted that interest in the centre would increase after Bulgaria joined the EU.The fair's board of directors had an ambitious programme to increase the fair's exhibition capacity but the project required fresh investment, Radev said.

The new terminal of Sofia Airport will be ready by September and meet its first visitor in November, according to the Transport Ministry.
The new landing-strip is expected to be ready next month but it will be linked with the old one at a later stage, Bulgarian Transport Minister Petar Mutafchiev said while inspecting the site Monday.
Austrian company Strabag has claimed several delays and also additional funding to complete the expansion and modernisation of the airport.

Bulgaria’s First Investment Bank (FIBank) said on August 28 it had launched a service for extending mortgage loans to foreign citizens.
Theese loans, which are for up to 20 years, have a floating interest rate of 6.9 per cent for the whole period. The interest goes to 8.4 per cent with downpayment between 20 and 30 per cent.
FiBank has become only the third bank in Bulgaria, after DSK Bank, owned by Hungarian OTP, and Bulbank, the local arm of Italy’s UniCredit Group, to start offering mortgage loans to foreigners to support purchases of Bulgarian real estate.
The move is considered by most Bulgarian banks on one side as risky because of the inability of some of them to check the credit record of a foreigner. Others believe it is inefficient to offer mortgage funding to western Europeans since the interest rates in Bulgaria are higher than those in most other European countries.
According to Jonathan Harfield, chief executive director of FIBank, however, offering lending to foreigners should be a normal move for any Bulgarian bank.
“If foreign people wish to buy property in London, Paris, New York or Lisbon or anywhere else, it is not difficult by any means to get a local bank to finance a mortgage. This is a normal business transaction. The passport somebody holds does not determine whether they are creditworthy,” Harfiled said in an interview with The Sofia Echo on August 28.
He believes that the fears of most of the local banks are unjustified.

If cheap fares are the key to filling domestic flights, the scorching heat wave in Great Britain seems enough to ensure full planes on the routes to Bulgaria's Black sea.
A group of 130 Irishmen has landed at the Southern Black Sea coast aboard a charter flight of European Air company, 24 Hours Daily reported. The tourists are to remain in the country for no more than two days and will head home aboard the same plane.

Bulgaria is the ninth most attractive place in the world to invest in. The country is ranked fourth in the Southeast Europe as regards the attracted direct foreign investments, after Russia, Ukraine and Romania. These data are taken from the World Report on Investments, presented by Neil Buhne, UN Resident coordinator for Bulgaria, and Ivo Prokopiev, Chairman of the Confederation of the Employers and Industrialists in Bulgaria.