News

A new skating rink will start functioning behind the National Palace of Culture in Sofia this winter. The rink's area is 600sq m and it will open on November 25, Bulgarian news agency BTA reported.

The new winter facility will be called Ice Park. It will open at 10am and continue working until 10pm each day. An hour and a half of skating will cost three leva.

Nearly 200 people will be able to skate at the same time. Skates will be offered for rent and a personal instructor will also be available. An entertainment zone will function alongside the skating rink. The zone will feature a stage and a restaurant. Organisers said these facilities will enable the staging of DJ parties and concerts.

The entertainment zone will be completed by March 2007. Similar skating rinks and entertainment facilities will be set up in Bansko and Haskovo, as wel

Balkanstroy, the local construction company, will build a ski and golf complex near Razlog, South-western Bulgaria, said the InvestBulgaria Agency which is due to issue a First Class Investor certificate to the project.
The 240 mln lev complex, located in the Kulinoto area, should be ready in 3 years.
Balkanstroy will built 20 km of ski lifts and 60 km of runs with a daily capacity of 6,500 skiers. The complex will have a total of 3,000 beds.

Speculative investors bought Bulgarian property well before confirmation was received that Bulgaria would join the EU; so now that Bulgaria's EU entry date has been confirmed as January 2007 have these speculators swallowed up all of the capital gains possible and bought the best rental rate returning real estate? Many would have you believe that this is the case but property investment experts Amberlamb reveal another side to the story – namely that it is still possible to profit, and profit well, from property in Bulgaria.

At which point did property in Bulgaria as an asset class shift in many people's minds from being the absolute must have investment commodity to being an over-hyped asset likely to be left standing empty, unable to be let out or resold? Is the change in attitude towards Bulgarian property accurate? And what's more - why should we care?

Firstly, we should care because many individuals have actually taken the plunge, believed the hype and invested significant sums of their hard earned money into property in Bulgaria in a bid to buy into a marketplace where there is both room for capital growth and demand for property to let for attractive rental returns, and it is unfair to dismissively undermine these people's investments merely on a whim!

Secondly, there remains not only room for impressive annual capital appreciation in Bulgaria for the medium term but the nation has one of the fastest growing tourism markets in the world meaning that it is a hotspot for careful and considered buy to let property investment for the long term…

Sofia/London. The budget of Bulgaria's State Agency for Tourism will double next year, the agency told FOCUS News Agency. Mario Al-Jebouri, chairman of the agency, took part in the tourist exhibition World Travel Market (WTM) in London. He presented Bulgaria as a tourist destination to English and Bulgarian media representatives.
“Tourism generates 12.5% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country and 9% from international tourism”, Mario Al-Jebouri said. The total of 170,000 Bulgarians are directly employed in the sector of tourism. The tourist sector together with the sectors accompanying it employs more than 300,000 people.
“Bulgaria is a beautiful country with a 13th-century long history and many cultural sites including two parks that have been put on the List of UNESCO World Heritage Sites”, Mario Al-Jebouri said.

 Construction activity in Razlog, South-western Bulgaria, will catch up with and overtake rival winter tourism destination Bansko over the next 2 years, said Bansko mayor Alexander Kravarov.
The scope of construction in the Razlog area could lead to the same infrastructure undercapacity issues now facing the more popular Bansko ski resort, warned Kravarov.

The Government approved on Thursday 2nd November 2006 draft amendments to the Ownership Act in connection with the changes in Article 22 of the Constitution of the Republic of Bulgaria, the Government's Information Service announced on Thursday.Under the draft amendments foreigners and foreign legal entities will be allowed to purchase land at the conditions, stemming from Bulgaria's accession into EU, from compliance with an international agreement, ratified, promulgated and having taken effect, or through inheritance. This provision is complied with the free movement of capital norms of the Treaty Establishing the European Community.

All tourism companies traded on the Bulgarian stock exchange have recorded in their non-consolidated financial reports a bump in January-September earnings.
Sea resort Albena said operating income rose 5.5% year-on-year to 81.9 mln levs while net profit fell 10% to 24.6 mln levs. Expenses increased to 58 mln levs from 51.7 mln levs a year ago

Bulgaria has banked over EUR 1.557 B from foreign holidaymakers in the first nine months of 2006, the deputy head of the State Tourism Agency reported.
Compared to the same period in 2005, the number of foreign tourists coming to Bulgaria has gone up by 5.39% and the revenues have increased by 5.45%.
Still, Bulgaria's development pace is lagging behind that of dynamic markets like those of Ireland, Norway and the UK, Stanislav Novakov added as quoted by Investor.bg.

A golf course will be built at the total cost of 195 million euro near the resort town of Pomorie, Bulgarian southern Black Sea coast. Today Kabland OOD will receive the first class investor certificate for its project Black Sea Golf & Country Club. This is the largest scale investment project in Bulgaria, the golf course is planned to lie on 191.8 ha in the vicinities of Kableshkovo town, near Pomorie. The complex will create jobs for 800 up to 1000 people.

Czech company CEZ would invest 2.2 million leva in the electricity network of Bansko winter resort in 2007, Darik Radio reported.

The investment would be used for the development and the modernisation of the network. After modernisation, electricity provision would be improved and more clients could be serviced.

The reconstruction of Bansko's electricity provision equipment would cost 1.3 million leva, Darik said. Another 206 000 leva would be utilised for electric wiring.

Part of the investment would be used for changing the electricity-meters in the region, Darik said.

CEZ investment was part of a programme for development of the electricity provision in Bansko region.