Sun, Nov 08 2009

Government plan to give money to municipalities leads to war of words and wrangling among beneficiaries.
Apart from banning all construction within 100 metres of the sea, the new proposals envision that all beaches, small and large, must be under municipal control.
A total of 4792 projects have been certified as safe by authorities, amongst them hospitals, power plants, road reconstruction and rehabilitation projects and railway stations.
Black Sea town of Primorsko will have a new summer theatre as part of a wider overhaul.
Hundreds of millions of euro to be spent by scheduled completion date of two-phase project in 2010
After being put on hold in September 2008, the refurbishment of numerous Bulgarian roads is set to start up again.
Erecting signs against political opponents has become the latest political fashion
Sofia prosecutors filed the bill of indictment against Vesselin Georgiev, the former head of the National Road Infrastructure Fund (NRIF), on January 15 2009, almost a year he was accused of in corruption in an investigation by Bulgarian-language weekly Kapital. In January 2008, the weekly reported that Georgiev was involved in a serious conflict of interest. His younger brother, Emil Georgiev, and the company he ran, Binder, had been assigned work worth 120 million leva of EU funds by the NRIF. Furthermore, Vesselin Georgiev himself was a former director at Binder.
Office rent transactions peaked at 65 000 sq m between July and September 2008, but collapsed to 10 700 sq m in Q3 2009, Forton manager Sergei Koinov said.
Most potential buyers are now opting to buy a luxury flat in the range of 120 000 to 150 000 euro or a single family home for about 500 000 euro.
About 30 000 to 35 000 people employed in the construction sector were facing redundancies in 2010, Bulgaria's Regional Development Minister Rossen Plevneliev said on October 26.
Average market prices of housing in Bulgaria dropped five per cent in July-September, measured quarter-on-quarter, the National Statistical Institute said on October 23 2009.
The European Investment Bank (EIB) has released a 43.5 million euro loan to Sofia Municipality, for infrastructure projects worth 88.1 million euro in total