In 2020, the Bulgarian economy shrank by 4.2%. Exports of goods and services were the main obstacles to economic activity with a gross negative contribution of 7.3 percentage points. Private consumption remained unchanged in 2020 compared to 2019 levels and was determined by changes in the intensity of restrictive measures during the year. Private consumption was supported by the retention of jobs under employment support schemes and the positive wage dynamics, the available financial condition of households at the beginning of the crisis and the relatively optimistic expectations for economic activity. Investment shrank sharply in the first half of last year amid heightened economic uncertainty and rising industrial capacity. With the gradual recovery of the use of capital and the increase of investments in the public sector in the second half of 2020, capital formation returned to pre-crisis levels. Government consumption supported total demand in the second half of 2020. Imports shrank by 6.6% in 2020.

In Sofia, the average salary exceeded BGN 2,000 for the first time and in December last year it was BGN 2,031, according to data from the National Statistical Institute. Residents of Sofia take about BGN 560 more than the average salary for the country, which in December amounts to BGN 1468. But if we subtract the salaries in the capital from the NSI data on the average salary, it turns out that salaries in the rest of the country are on average about BGN 1,140, ​​and the citizens of Sofia take 77% more. In second place in terms of income, immediately after the capital, are the residents of Vratsa, where they take an average of BGN 1,397. Vratsa holds the second place in the first half of last year. The opening of factories for the production of car electronics in the city contributes to this. The third place is for Sofia region with BGN 1,346 per month. The reason for this is that many people from this area work in the capital and companies in the area also have to pay higher salaries to keep their employees. Stara Zagora climbs to fourth place in the ranking, as the average salary in the district is 1,295 BGN. The main reason for the relatively high salaries in Stara Zagora are the factories for the production of car parts in the city. Varna remains in fifth place with an average of BGN 1,287 per month.

Insurify, an artificial intelligence-based platform for comparing insurance services, has opened its first international development center in Sofia, the digital capital of Eastern Europe. This is the latest achievement of the fast-growing company, which recorded a 2.5-fold increase in revenue on an annual basis and increased the number of employees more than 3 times in 2020. The development center in Sofia attracted an experienced team of 15 software engineers and artificial experts intelligence specializing in building technologies for fast-growing markets. In the recent past, the team was part of one of the largest meta-search engines for airline tickets - Skyscanner, which closed its office in Sofia in 2020 due to the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on international travel. The head of Insurify in Sofia is the technical director Konstantin Halachev, who until recently led the development of a machine learning platform for the Skyscanner search engine.

France's IT group Atos said that it has fully delivered and assembled Bulgaria's new European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC) supercomputer at Sofia Tech Park. "This will be the most powerful supercomputer in Eastern Europe and will help to leverage Bulgaria’s high-tech ambitions," Atos said in a statement. The machine, based on Atos’ BullSequana XH2000 architecture, will most probably become operational in July. The EuroHPC supercomputer is designed to serve the development of scientific, public and industrial applications in many fields, including bioinformatics, pharmacy, molecular dynamics and mechanics, quantum chemistry and biochemistry, artificial intelligence, personalized medicine, bioengineering, meteorology, and the fight against climate change. Last year, the European Commission said that the EuroHPC signed an EUR 11.5 million deal to acquire a new supercomputing system in Bulgaria, to be capable of more than 4.4 petaflops. Atos was later selected by the EuroHPC and the consortium “Petascale Supercomputer Bulgaria” (PetaSC-Bulgaria) whose leading partner is Sofia Tech Park to build the petascale supercomputer. Atos is a global leader in cybersecurity, cloud and high-performance computing with 105,000 employees and annual revenue of over EUR 11 billion.

Esetere Bulgaria - part of the American cosmetic company dōTERRA, has officially opened a new rosary - Terra Rose in the area of ​​Shipka. "The investment is about USD 1.2 million and the employees will be between 10 and 15, depending on the workload and the season," Plamen Nikolov, manager of the Bulgarian company, told Capital. The first tests for the distillation of rose oil passed successfully in February. The installation in Terra Rose has four distillation apparatuses, each with a volume of 5.5-5.8 cubic meters. For comparison - in Dobrich Esetere Bulgaria has 38 distilleries. The equipment is entirely Bulgarian development, and the team of specialists has experience in research. The rose distillery in Shipka will be not only for production, but for informative-demonstration purposes, as well. The employees on a permanent employment contract in the Bulgarian company are over 100, and others - about 150-160 are seasonally employed for the period from April to September each year. After the investment in the rosary this year, Esetere plans to direct funds to the implementation of social projects supporting local communities. One of them is the upcoming summer academy in the town of Shipka for children from music schools.

Bulgarian state-owned gas supplier Bulgargaz is planning to propose to the energy regulator to approve a wholesale gas price of BGN 44.72 per MWh, to be valid in July. The planned proposal takes into account the price-forming indicators as at May 11. The final proposal will be submitted for approval on July 1. Last month, Bulgargaz said that it is planning to propose a price of BGN 35.74 per MWh to be valid in June. The price valid for the month of May is BGN 37.71 per MWh. Bulgarian energy regulations were changed last year, requiring Bulgargaz to set the gas price monthly instead of quarterly. The Energy and Water Regulatory Commission (EWRC) has the final say on the proposed changes in the wholesale price, at which the state-owned company sells natural gas to end-suppliers and customers directly connected to its transmission network. In March 2020, Bulgargaz negotiated a 40.3% cut in the price of Russian natural gas imports based on an agreement between the European Commission and Russia's Gazprom. Bulgargaz and Gazprom changed the pricing formula for Russian gas imports, setting as its main component the price on the regional markets instead of the price of petroleum derivatives.

Bulgarian biometric identification security solutions developer Biodit said that its revenue grew to BGN 61,000 in the first quarter of 2021 from BGN 40,000 in the same period of 2020. Biodit's expenses fell by an annual 26% to BGN 105,000 in the first three months of the year, the company said in a statement. The company completed over ten new projects in the review period, including three office buildings, one hotel, and several production plants. Earlier this year, Biodit raised BGN 1 million in an initial public offering (IPO) on the Bulgarian Stock Exchange's BEAM market, priced at BGN 1 per share.

Germany has new ambitions in the green sphere, but in order to fulfill them, it will have to rely on unpopular technologies, Bloomberg commented. Chancellor Angela Merkel has already announced that the country will strive for carbon neutrality by 2045, and not as before - by 2050. The details on the measures will be announced later this week. To achieve zero carbon emissions by 2045, Berlin will have to give up coal by 2030 at the latest, eight years earlier than previously planned, and sales of new petrol and diesel cars must be completed by 2032. This is shown by the calculations of the Agora think tank. Increasing electric mobility means that electricity consumption will double and the industry will need pure hydrogen to meet eco-ambitions. Germany also needs to work on several other areas - carbon storage. In 2045, the industry must capture and store about 73 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, compared to zero tons today. However, efforts to develop the technology have failed at this stage in the face of criticism from environmentalists who oppose "injecting" emissions into the earth's interior.

Consumer prices in the United States in April rose by 4.2% on an annual basis and rose by 0.8% on a monthly basis, according to a press release from the Ministry of Labor. The increase in consumer prices in April in annual terms is a record high since September 2008, when the figure was 4.9%. Analysts polled by the Daily FX portal expected consumer prices to rise 3.6% year-on-year and 0.2% month-on-month. At the end of March, annual inflation in the United States was 2.6% and monthly growth was 0.6%. Core inflation in the United States, excluding food and energy prices, was 3% year on year in April, while prices rose 0.9% from the previous month in March. Both indicators turned out to be higher than the analysts' forecasts, which expected their values to be at 2.3% and 0.3%, respectively. At the same time, the Ministry of Labor notes that the growth of prices in monthly terms is the highest since April 1982.

Toyota will partner with Japanese company ENEOS to develop a hydrogen system that will power the prototype of the futuristic city of Woven City, writes Tech Crunch. The vision for the city, which will cover 175 acres, is a place where people work and live among all Toyota projects, including the e-Palette autonomous minibuses and the company's robots. The ecosystem will be fully connected and powered by hydrogen. Woven Planet, Toyota's innovative division that spearheads the project, announced that Japanese oil company ENEOS, which is investing heavily in hydrogen, will help build the city of the future. The partnership also underscores Toyota's vision for a hydrogen future. The two companies will work together to find out if it is possible to build a hydrogen supply chain - from production to supply and use. ENEOS, which already operates 45 hydrogen charging stations in Japan, will build another one near Woven City. This is expected to happen by the end of 2023. "We believe that hydrogen energy will play an integral role in the realization of carbon neutrality worldwide," said ENEOS President Katsuyuki Ota. Construction of the city itself began in February near the town of Susono, at the foot of Mount Fuji.