News

 The old school in the village of Sitovo is going to become the first eco-cultural centre in the region of Plovdiv. This was announced yesterday by Rodophi municipality. The stone school was sold for the price of 55 000E two years ago. It was bought by Nikola Dimitrov, the owner of an advertising and trading company in Sofia. The saying goes that he is a descendent of an old generation which comes from the village of Bojkovo and it used to rule half of the territory of Rodophi mountain.
“Now we are making repairs of the building. There will be halls for marshal arts, yoga, dancing, a music studio, etc.” said N. Dimitrov. Creative seminars, outdoor school classes for children, climbing and horse riding will be also organized there. It is planned to have special programs for children from poor families.
Projects for two ecoroutes are prepared, as well and volunteers will mark them.            

 A review of search engine entries during the last three months has revealed that Bulgarian property is quickly becoming one of Europe's leading investment interests.

The research by d2rworldwide.com reveals that the recent surge of interest in Bulgarian property is unprecedented in the Eastern European market, although some comparisons have been drawn with Croatia.

Like Croatia, Bulgaria is expecting EU accession within the next few years and this will necessarily lead to a considerable increase in its real estate value. A similar process has already started to occur in Cyprus and when Bulgaria accedes to the European Union in 2007 it is widely believed that Sofia in particular will compete with other leading European capitals as a location for the European offices of many multi-national companies.

This is likely to instigate a successful corporate market which could transform Bulgaria into one of Europe's most attractive countries for property investment within the next few years.

Stuart Law, managing director of property investment specialist Assetz, anticipated this boom in April 2005, pointing to Bulgaria's diverse landscape as well as its potential for development.

 
The cable car will carry 1000 persons per hour              

A lift will connect Smolyan with Pamporovo and the TV tower and Snejanka Tower. Very soon the locals and guests of the city will be able to use the cable car to reach Pamporovo. The project has already provoked huge investors’ interests, announced Dora Ynakova. Two project teams developed conceptions for the transport equipment, which will cost 25 million BGN. The cable car will be 7 km and will considerably shorten the distance between Smolyan and Pamporovo. The idea is that the first part of the lift will be 5 km long and will be 100% transport connection. It will start from Smolyan and will carry six tourists in a cabin. The distance to Raykovski Livadi site, where the middle station is situated will be taken for less than 10 minutes. The lift will than proceed to Snejanka peak, where the tourists will be able to directly downhill along the white slopes. Its length will be around 2, 4 km, and the capacity of the equipment will be around 1000 people per hour. The technical research is already completed. The mayor of Smolyan Dora Yankova hopes that the construction and the installation of the equipment will start together with the development of the resort main body “Raikovski Livadi”. The municipal council made a decision the hotels and villas to be not more than four floors, to preserve the nature and the natural land shaft of the terrain.

 An airport and new roads will attract investors, said the mayor Dora Yankova

- Mrs Yankova, what are the perspectives before Smolyan? Does the construction invasion of hotels in the Pamporovo resort, highlights higher standards for Smolyan itself?
- Our ambition is to transform Smolyan into attractive site for the small business. Thus we developed a project for modernization and development of industrial centre “North”. The headquarters of some of the biggest companies in the municipal are based there. However we need to modernize the road infrastructure and the other communications. We want to project other connections that will take the freight trucks straight from the factories to the republic road- from the exit of the town to Pamporovo. The contemporary industrial zone foresees a small civil airport, new opportunities for connections with the inner parts of the country.

-Will there be any opportunities for other companies to construct, production centres in the “North” zone? It is known that the terrains and parcels in town are more than scarce.
-This is one of the main goals - to create more opportunities for the small business. We will develop and modernize the “North” zone by regulating the land plots. We will create sites for industrial manufacture. The town has three main exits and the zone will be directly connected with them and the civil airport as well. We will create a modern economic centre, but we have to use all of the resources we have.

- How is the sport- tourism centre – “Perelik” developing? When is the actual start of the construction works expected?
- By the end of the year the contract with the investor and companies that won the competition with their projects for the centre will be signed. It will be unique and will give opportunities for all year round tourism with modern sport equipment and over 80 km ski slopes, golf courses and etc. The great advantage of this centre is the huge construction works will be avoided. It will protect the wild beauty of the nature and mountain and the tourist will receive first class conditions for sport and recreation.
The hotel base will be in Smolyan and the nearby situated centres Raykovski livadi and Smolyan lakes. Minimum 12 thousand beds are needed to welcome the tourists.     

 The RIU chain will be opening two new establishments in the eastern Mediterranean in May: ClubHotel Riu Miramar on the Bulgarian coast near Obzor and Riu Fantasy Beach, RIU’s first hotel in Romania.

ClubHotel Riu Miramar is located on the beach between the Golden Sands and Sunny Beach resorts on the shores of the Black Sea. Its 2 to 5-storey building is surrounded by 14,000 square metres of garden.

ClubHotel Riu Miramar is a 4-star establishment that boasts 500 rooms and modern installations, including a 150-square-metre indoor swimming pool with jacuzzi and a 300-square-metre conference hall which is ideal for incentive trips and business meetings.

The hotel features the all-inclusive formula and its extensive gastronomical offer includes local dishes at special Bulgarian grilled dinners in the theme restaurant, reservations required.      

 The inclusion of Bulgarian territories in the European environmental network Natura 2000 would have positive effects on Bulgarian tourism, leader of Bulgaria's Party of the Greens Valentin Simov said.

Natura 2000 aimed to preserve nature, one of the country's treasures, and to enable tourists access the protected areas, he said. Simov said as quoted by Focus news agency Natura 2000 would contribute to the development of ecological tourism in Bulgaria.

Authorities had to convince Bulgarians that the owners of property in the protected areas would be compensated, said Simov. Simov used as an example the region selected for Varna port re-location, which was to be included in the protected areas list, but hardly had any rare bird nesting there because of the smoke.

Environment and Water Affairs Minister Djevdet Chakurov will be responsible for the Natura 2000 consequences because he over-trusted his employees, Simov said. The ministry failed to inform Bulgarians about the compensation and the initiative in general, said he.

According to plans 30 per cent of Bulgaria's territories are to be included in Natura 2000. Property owners from these regions protested against the limitations to be imposed with the introduction of the network, while environmentalists said that more areas should be listed in Natura 2000.

 There comes a time in any emerging property market’s period of transition when it stops emerging and it actually arrives, and 2007 could very well be the year when Bulgaria’s property market arrives. The future profit potential for property in Bulgaria in 2007 will be aided greatly by the fact that the country will become a member of the European Union on the 1st of January and between 2007 and around 2010 the property market in this Eastern European country will most certainly remain hot.

Some have said that prior to accession all of the profits have been drained from the market, that greed and speculation have damaged the long term attraction of Bulgaria for its required international tourism and retiree market and that actually Bulgarian property was a flash in the pan as an investment commodity – this article will prove that to be a false series of assumptions. Bulgaria will return profitability in 2007.

It’s true that Bulgarian property as an investment asset has boomed significantly in just three short years. Gone are the days when a buyer could snap up a decent property with good sea or mountain views for next to no money but then gone are also the days when one could not get a mortgage to buy in Bulgaria, when the property buying process was opaque, corruption was rife and it was impossible to determine whether a given patch of land would be awarded planning permission or even get utilities run to it. The market has definitely matured and this maturity has improved the investment climate in Bulgaria.
As the country joins the European Union so it will open the doors for further investment and one of the main sectors likely to boom in 2007 and beyond is the retail sector which is a good alternative market to residential property for an investor to examine.     

 Kiril Assenov is an ambitious local businessman, and manager of “Perelik” AD, the company that won the municipality competition for the construction of the new Perelik Sport & Tourism Resort, near the well-established and already popular resort of Pamporovo.

The young businessman owns approx. 5000 decares of land and has already spent more than 500 000 BGN on the project. What started as an enthusiastic idea for several ski facilities turned into a mega project that now involves serious investor companies that have experience in the development of modern large-scale ski resorts in USA and Canada.

The project will further involve the company “Gela Engineering”, which will build the ski runs and facilities from the villages of Gela and Shileva Chuka, the company “Detelina Tours” Ltd. and the municipality itself.

Its infrastructure stipulates the construction of an airport close to Smolyan and a modern road from Plovdiv, the second largest city in Bulgaria.

Bulgaria has launched a system of 23 points, which allow a complete monitoring of the sea in terms of physical, chemical and biological indexes.

The monitoring system complies with all EU requirements.

It has been created thanks to a project financed by the government of the Netherlands and costs BGN 400,000.

The main sources that pollute the Black Sea are the Danube, Dnepr, and Dnestr. The Varna and Burgas bays however remain risky because their waters are mainly polluted by industrial and agricultural activity.

     The lack of skilled workers, more expensive construction materials and electricity will bring up construction prices in 2007, Capital weekly reported. At the same time the market prices of property are not expected to climb up at such high pace because of the increased supply.

Bulgaria would also have to meet European quality requirements, the report said. These demands would also bring up construction prices, property analysts said.

An expected increase would vary between three and five per cent, representatives of the National Construction Federation said.

Apart from the higher standards, EU entry would enable Bulgarian workers find employment in other countries, Capital reported. The country already experiences labour hand shortage.

To keep their employees construction companies will have to offer higher wages. According to construction sector representatives wages would increase until they reached the European levels of 20 euro an hour