One in five Bulgarians is likely to be out of work in 2010, Bulgarian Industrial Association (BIA) chief executive Bozhidar Danev said on January 18 2010.

Danev's estimate was in sharp contrast to what Bulgarian Finance Minister Simeon Dyankov said on January 4, when he forecast that Bulgaria would show the first signs of recovery from the global economic downturn as early as the beginning of spring 2010.

In an interview with Bulgarian National Television (BNT), Dyankov said that Bulgaria had already reached "the bottom of the crisis in November-December 2009, but by March 2010 the climate should improve".

BIA, an employers' unions that has a track record of taking a more grim view of the current economic downturn than the cabinet, said that the worst situation would be in northwestern and northeastern parts of the country, where unemployment could reach as high as 60 per cent.

Official statistics put unemployment at 9.3 per cent at end-December 2009 and the government forecast is for 13.8 per cent unemployment at the end of 2010. However, those figures only take into account the people who have filed for unemployment benefits, but a large number never file for benefits, Danev said.

Higher unemployment would hamper Bulgaria's economic recovery because of the impact on the banking sector, where non-performing loans would continue to increase; economic growth, which would suffer because of the decrease in household consumption; and government finances, which would be hit by falling revenue from taxes and mandatory social security contributions.

According to Danev, the way for the Cabinet to jumpstart the recover would be through infrastructure projects, including road infrastructure, sanitation of public buildings, river dams, water treatment stations, bridges, tunnels and motorways.

Danev said that one of the Bulgarian industries affected most by the downturn in 2010 would be arms manufacturing and the defence sector.