BULGARIA is becoming one of the most important investment destinations for Italian businesses, said participants in a two-day Bulgarian-Italian business forum held in Sofia on April 14 and 15.
The forum, organised by the Italian Foreign Trade Institute, Confindustria (Italian Confedera-tion of Industrialists) and the Italian Bankers Association (ABI), was held during a visit by Italian president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi to Sofia. Ciampi and his Bulgarian host, President Georgi Purvanov, attended the second day of the event.
Giovanni Sacchi, head of the Sofia office of the Italian Foreign Trade Institute, urged enhancement of the performance of the judiciary and of the competitiveness of Bulgarian companies. He gave a briefing on opportunities for investment in sectors of the Bulgarian economy, such as industry as a whole, power engineering and environment, construction, tourism, information technologies and the food processing industry.
Bulbank-Unicredito chief operating officer Alessandro Decio assessed in positive terms the development of the Bulgarian economy and predicted that in 2007, economic growth in this country would be 5.3 per cent and unemployment would drop to 10.5 per cent.
Last year's Italian investments in Bulgaria equalled about $70 million, which made Italy the third largest investor in this country, said Bulgarian Investment Agency chairman Pavel Ezekiev.
Bulgaria is among the most developed countries in South-Eastern Europe, with the greatest share of attracted foreign investments and the best functioning market economy, Stability Pact Co-ordinator for Bulgaria Milen Keremedchiev told the forum. Bulgarian companies are already stable and consolidated and have started investing in neighbouring countries, he said.
Representatives of 120 Italian businesses, participating in the forum, unveiled that they were interested in Varna Shipyard and in making investments in power engineering, infrastructure projects and the aviation sector. This particular interest was also pointed out by Italy's production activities minister Antonio Marzano in a meeting with Economy Minister Milko Kovachev.
Marzano highly praised the Bulgarian Government's economic policy and the programme for developing small- and medium-sized enterprises. He said that there were already more than 800 Italian companies doing business in Bulgaria.
During the meeting, the two ministers discussed ways to attract additional Italian investments to Bulgaria, increase commodity exchange, and promote the establishment of joint ventures.
Infrastructure had become a major part of Bulgaria-Italy relations and it was time for the two countries to go beyond declarations and invest in the implementation of Pan-European Corridor VIII, Purvanov said, addressing the forum on April 15.
Ciampi said that the implementation of the project for Corridor VIII underscored the importance of the geographical location of the two countries. He said that this was in the two states' best interest as it would link their transport and energy networks.
The West-East Corridor VIII runs from the Albanian Adriatic port of Durres and across Tirana, Skopje, Gyueshevo (South-Western Bulgaria), Kyustendil, Pernik, Sofia and Bourgas (on the Black Sea) with a stretch to Varna (also on the Black Sea). The idea is to move the transit cargo traffic from the Western Mediterranean through the Italian port of Brindisi to Russia and other CIS countries, Caucasus and, across Turkey, to the Middle East and South-Western Asia.
Purvanov was optimistic about bilateral economic relations, saying that he expected commercial exchange to exceed $3 billion in 2006. He welcomed heightened Italian interest in the Bulgarian energy industry and said that Bulgaria was, and would remain, an energy hub in the Balkans.
The presence of so many Italian business people in Sofia was proof of the economic progress of Bulgaria, the good conditions it provides, its advanced and unambiguous legislation, its well-qualified workforce, and its strategic geographic location, Ciampi said.
He called on Italian entrepreneurs to act so that Bulgaria would become a platform from which Italian business could spread into the whole Danube-Balkan area.