Financial news

Government debt at the end of February 2013 was BGN 14.4 billion and at the end of last year it fell to BGN 14.1 billion, said chairman of the Budget Committee of the Parliament Jordan Tsonev. This proves that loans totaling BGN 1 billion, taken after the update of the 2013 budget, have been directed to repay old debts rather than for social benefits . Issuance of a new loan of nearly BGN 3 billion after the European elections also will not increase the debt because these funds will be used to return old debts of the State, Tsonev said. According to him, there is no change in the government's intentions, because the budget has provided loans for a total of BGN 4.4 billion for all 2014. Of them BGN 1.4 billion will be used to cover the budget deficit, and the rest to refinance old debts of the country. Eurobonds, which will be issued after the European elections, may be divided into two tranches of BGN 1.5 billion. One will be 5-year and the other - 10 year.

Annual inflation in December in the euro area slipped to 0.8% from 0.9% in November, and down from 2.2% a year ago. Annual inflation in the euro zone held steady at 1% compared to November, but was down from 2.3% in the same period last year. Monthly inflation was 0.3% in both the euro area and the euro zone in December. In December, the lowest annual rates were observed in Greece (-1.8%), Cyprus (-1.3%), Bulgaria (-0.9%) and Latvia (-0.4%), and the highest rates were seen in Estonia, Austria and the United Kingdom (all 2.0%) and Finland (1.9%).The lowest 12-month average rates up to December 2013 were registered in Greece (-0.9%), Latvia (0.0%), Bulgaria, Cyprus, Portugal and Sweden (all 0.4%), and the highest in Estonia and Romania (both 3.2%), the Netherlands and the United Kingdom (both 2.6%).

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Companies

Contracts for EUR 60 million were signed by Bulgarian companies from the business delegation accompanying President Rosen Plevneliev during his official visit to China. Total contracts signed are seven. The largest of them is of Walltopia, which is a world leader in manufacturing climbing walls. The company, whose production base is located near Lovech, has offices in USA, Canada, UK, Germany, France, and yet opens to the Asian market. The innovative company has negotiated contracts with an indicative value of EUR 50 million with a Chinese client, for who over the next five years will build entertainment centers for practicing extreme sports. Order size is significant not only compared to the total amount of contracts during the business delegation in China, but also against the performance of Walltopia in Bulgaria. According to company founder Ivaylo Penchev, revenue for 2013 only of the Bulgarian company will reach BGN 25 million, and concluded to date contracts ensuring revenue growth of about 50%.

Yet another investment on Bulgarian market of medical services. It is made by Synevo- a chain of labs of the Swiss Medicover group. In a year after stepping on the Bulgarian market, the company has invested about BGN 3 million. At present the company has eight reception points for blood in Sofia and has acepted to carry research on the principle of outsourcing in two large metropolitan hospitals - "St. Sofia" and "Serdica". Besides this, the company has bought a Plovdiv-based lab named Chronolab. The chain is to continue to expand in Varna and Bourgas, probably in Pleven, too. Synevo plans to invest between EUR 3 and 5 million in purchase of labs till the end of the year. The idea is investment in Bulgaria to return in about five years. Labs of the chain will offer unique tests, as part of the samples will be sent to Germany for research. The company started with 10 patients a day, as compared to 700-800 people at present. Medicover group operates in 12 countries in central and Eastern Europe.

Companies that do not pay their workers systematically or do not comply with other principles of European labor law now automatically would be excluded from tendering for public contracts. So reads one of the changes in EU rules that were voted by the European Parliament in Brussels. According to them an advantage in determining the overall winner of the auction will not be the lowest bid, but the good ratio between price and quality. Thus, entities can choose at their discretion companies with higher bids, which have a greater contribution to the protection of the environment, or using innovative technologies and will have a greater social impact of their business. The new rules also introduced a new type of procedure in procurement - Innovation Partnership . It will give the contractors the authority to seek solutions to specific social problem, without determining in the terms of the auction the technology that should be used, but instead will leave more freedom.

Bulgarian engineering, construction and energy group Enemona has sold its stake of 90% in subsidiary Nevrokop-Gas. Enemona has signed a preliminary contract for the sale of 45,000 Nevrokop-Gas shares with a nominal value of BGN 1.0 each, the company said in a notice on its website, without disclosing the other party in the deal. In 2008, Enemona and the Bulgarian town of Gotse Delchev set up Nevrokop Gas as a 90/10 joint venture to provide gas distribution services in the town.

In March, the Russian gas pipeline project South Stream will receive a building permit by the Bulgarian authorities. In the same month, it will become clear who will be the contractor for the Bulgarian section. It is expected that actual construction on the pipeline will begin in June. The comments were made Thursday by the CEO of South Stream Transport Oleg Aksyutin, who is in the Bulgarian Black Sea city of Varna in connection with the opening of an information center for South Stream. In early December, the European Commission cautioned that the bilateral intergovernmental agreements on the South Stream gas pipeline project between Russia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Greece, Slovenia, Austria and Croatia had to be renegotiated in order to comply with EU law. On Tuesday, Russia informed it was not willing to annul the agreements it has signed with six EU countries, including Bulgaria. Instead, Russia expects the European Commission to put forth proposals on the adaption of the inter-governmental agreements to the Third Energy Package, Russian Permanent Representative to the European Union Vladimir Chizhov has said.

Europe

The European Central Bank favors requiring banks to show their capital won’t fall below 6 percent of their assets when it puts them through a simulated recession later this year, said two euro-area officials with knowledge of the matter. A majority of policy makers and technical officials have reached consensus on the benchmark for the ECB’s stress test, the people said, asking not to be identified as the deliberations aren’t public. The threshold must still be agreed on with the European Banking Authority that coordinates the exams, and a small number of countries wanting an easier benchmark may press for a compromise lower than 6 percent, one of the people said. A benchmark of 6 percent would be tougher than the 5 percent set by the London-based EBA in 2011, when models of an economic “adverse scenario” failed to reveal shortcomings at banks that later collapsed.

America

Treasuries (BUSY) rose after a report showed the number of people continuing to receive jobless benefits jumped to the highest since July, reflecting unevenness in the economic recovery. The benchmark 10-year yield fell to almost a one-month low as continuing claims jumped by 174,000 to 3.03 million in the week ended Jan. 4 as the Federal Reserve begins stimulus cuts. A separate report showed the consumer price index rose 1.5 percent in the past year, below the Fed’s 2 percent target. China and Japan boosted holdings of Treasuries to a record high in November, data released on the Treasury Department’s website showed. The 10-year yield fell four basis points, or 0.04 percentage point, to 2.85 percent at 9:33 a.m. New York time, according to Bloomberg Bond Trader prices. The 2.75 percent note due in November 2023 rose 10/32, or $3.13 per $1,000 face amount, to 99 1/8. The yield reached 2.82 on Jan. 13, the least since Dec. 11.

Asia

China for the first time has tested a hypersonic missile vehicle designed to travel several times the speed of sound, the Pentagon said. The test makes China the second country after the United States to conduct experimental flights with hypersonic vehicles, a technology that could allow armies to rapidly strike distant targets anywhere on the globe. "We're aware of the test of the hypersonic vehicle but we are not commenting on it," said Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Pool, a Pentagon spokesman. The flight was conducted on January 9 and the Chinese vehicle, dubbed the WU-14, is supposed to travel at Mach 10, or 10 times the speed of sound, according to a report in the Washington Free Beacon, an online publication. In its annual report on the Chinese military, the Pentagon made no mention of hypersonic test flights but did say the Chinese had built a hypersonic wind tunnel for experiments.

St. Anthony’s Feast

On January 17 the Bulgarian Orthodox Church celebrates the feast of St. Anthony the Great, born in 251. At 12, he was left an orphan and abandoned himself to solitude by going to the desert, where he founded a monastery. When he was 104 years old, he became involved in an open dispute with the adherents of the Aryan doctrine and defeated them. He died the next year and was buried in a secret place. Later on, his relics were discovered and moved to Vienna. According to the Bulgarian folk tradition, the day of St. Anthony is celebrated for protection against illness. People believe that once there lived two twin-brothers, the smiths Anthony and Atanas, who invented the pair of pliers. Therefore the days of St. Anton (January 17) and St. Atanas (January 18) are celebrated as feasts of all smiths, cutlers and farriers. On January 17, all people called Anton, Antonia, Andon, Donka, celebrate their name day.

On that day:  St. Constantine and Helena Church in Plovdiv The Krushuna waterfalls – Maarata