The complete chaos at the Registry Agency (RA) led to additional expenses for businesses, the Bulgarian Industrial Association (BIA) said in an open letter to Justice Minister Meglena Tacheva on February 4. The letter had been copied to the head of the Registry Agency Emil Stankov.
The BIA said it had expected that the single administrative electronic Registry Agency would lead to faster, easier and transparent registration procedures. Instead, the BIA media statement said, "we have been witnesses of how businesses are being punished."

In its letter, the BIA summed up a series of complaints.

The current procedure, where an eight page registration application would have to be copied, scanned, printed, signed and stamped before being returned to the applicant, took at least half an hour, BIA said.

Because the Registry often did not succeed to process re-registration on time, companies missed the seven-day deadline for the declaration and subsequently faced fines of between 500 and 1000 leva, BIA said.

Applicants did not receive confirmation of receipt of their documents from the Registration Agency, making the online application process uncertain.

Some of courts were said to issue a certificate of good standing specifically for the re-registration procedure against a fee, despite the fact that the re-registrations process was supposed to be free of charge, BIA said.

Additionally, some notaries would charge processing of the application not as the certification of a signature, but as the certification of a document, which made the application more expensive, BIA said.

The BIA proposed in its letter a series of changes in the registration procedure at the RA and asked the minister to forgo sanctions until changes had been made.