For January, all companies in Bulgaria will be compensated with up to BGN 250 for each spent megawatt hour. The final amount of compensation will depend on the average price of electricity during the month achieved on the energy exchange. The decision for the higher compensation was taken at the meeting of the Council of Ministers. The compensation for November 2021 was fixed at BGN 110, and for December - it was set at BGN 130 per megawatt-hour, and then there was a ceiling of 30% of the average traded value of electricity. Prime Minister Kiril Petkov reassured businesses that they would receive compensation for the last month of last year with an invoice for January, which will arrive early next month. Thus, the amounts for two months will be deducted at once. The Minister of Energy Alexander Nikolov explained that steps have already been taken to request permission from Brussels for the compensation for electricity for business for the period January-March 2022, as well as for the compensation for household subscribers to natural gas. He does not expect any problems with the notification.

The European Commission said that it approved a EUR 3.1 million Bulgarian scheme for support of tour operators in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. The scheme is in line with the conditions set out in the State Aid Temporary Framework as financing will not exceed EUR 2.3 million per beneficiary; and will be granted no later than June 30, the Commission said in a statement on Wednesday. The aim of the scheme is to provide liquidity support to tour operators having to refund customers for the travels scheduled to take place in the March-December period of 2020 and subsequently cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak and the travel restrictions put in place to limit the spread of the virus.

The Bulgarian producer of organic food and bars Roobar - Smart Organic - has acquired 100% of the shares of the Dutch company Amigos International Trade BV, the company announced in x3news.com. The amount of the deal is not reported. However, it will help the domestic player to strengthen its presence in the markets of the Netherlands and Belgium, where the foreign company has developed its own distribution network. Amigos' main customers are the Jumbo supermarket chain and the Eko Plaza and Odin organic stores. As a logical continuation of the deal, Smart Organic will take advantage of the company's developed business relations in the two markets in question and transfer to it the distribution of its Kookie Cat and Roobar brands from its current distributor. According to the information, the revenues of Amigos for 2020 amount to EUR 140 thousand. Its acquisition by the Bulgarian company is expected to contribute positively to the growth of one of its main business operations - the import and marketing of organic arena sugar from Indonesia under its own brand Red Ape. The idea of ​​Smart Organic is to expand the product market through its wide network of customers throughout Europe.

Kozloduy NPP will transfer to the State Enterprise Radioactive Waste (SERAW) assets worth BGN 56 million - facility for plasma incineration of solid radioactive waste, together with movable and immovable property, including assets under construction. This is regulated in a decision of the government. With the decision the assets are declared private state property and are transferred to SERAW. At present, the assets of Kozloduy NPP continue to have assets acquired as a result of the implementation of decommissioning projects of Units 1-4, which are not inherent in the activities performed by the plant. According to the provisions of the Law on Safe Use of Nuclear Energy, the decommissioning of nuclear facilities is carried out by SERAW. Given the specific subject of activity of the enterprise, with the transfer of assets, the activity of radioactive waste disposal will be finally separated from Kozloduy NPP.

Rakuten Viber, the globally leading instant messaging app, increased its market share in Bulgaria to 90% last year and will focus on creating a dedicated business space inside the app in 2022, senior company officials said. It is expected that Viber's expansion might slow down in 2022 in comparison with recent years' extremely robust growth but this will allow the company to consolidate its achievements and give it time for further development of its products. In the autumn of 2021, Viber signed a strategic partnership agreement with Bulgarian payment solutions provider EasyPay, enabling its users to pay bills easily via the app. In line with Viber's focus on facilitating communication between businesses and customers, last year saw a 26% increase in the number of Viber's business chatbots in Bulgaria, while the number of new accounts for business messages went up 46%. In 2022 Viber will focus on creating a dedicated business space inside the app, allowing businesses to increase their visibility, as well as creating partnerships in the fintech sector. A full-blown solution in the sphere of peer-to-peer (P2P) payments will be launched by Viber by the end of the year, with Bulgaria to be included in its second wave of expansion.

Phoenix Capital Holding announced that after the tender offer to the other shareholders it already directly owns 4,859,045 of the voting rights, or 51.41%, in the general meeting of Exclusive Property REIT. The deals with the six shareholders who accepted the offer Phoenix Capital Holding made a tender offer to the other shareholders of Exclusive Property at a price of BGN 1.45 per share in early October. The Financial Supervision Commission (FSC) did not ban the tender offer. The Holding does not intend to deregister Exclusive Property from the stock exchange, nor to transform it into an ordinary joint-stock company. The activity will not change either. The main project of the company is an office building on Todor Alexandrov Blvd. and Ovche Pole St. in Sofia.

The small mountain town of Simitli may be the first place in Bulgaria where plastic waste will be converted into energy. A letter of intent to build such an installation was signed in November between the mayor of the municipality, Apostol Apostolov, and the British company Hydrogen Utopia International (HUI). The technology is new and is expected to be implemented in Poland for the first time by the end of this year. In short, it recycles plastic waste into synthetic gas. In turn, it can produce electricity and steam, as well as hydrogen. Such a project would cost about EUR 25 mln, and a possible investment would be made by HUI. Under an agreement signed last fall, HUI is licensed to use the technology in Europe, and Powerhouse Energy retains rights to the island.

Europe receives record amounts of liquefied gas, according to data from Gas Infrastructure Europe, quoted by TASS. In recent days, 400 million cubic meters per day have flowed through liquefied gas terminals in Europe. This is 2.5 times more than the average for January over the past five years. Since the beginning of the year, Europe has received 6.4 billion cubic meters, which is 8.5% more than the record quantities reported in 2020. Compared to January 1-18, imports of liquefied natural gas in Europe increased by 38.5%. Meanwhile, Gazprom said gas exports to major markets - Europe, Turkey and China - fell 41% to 5.4 billion cubic meters. GIE data also show that gas storage facilities in Europe currently have about 50 billion cubic meters of gas, which is 16 billion cubic meters less than in the same period last year. This means that on average the facilities are filled to about 45% of their capacity, which is 26 percentage points less than the data for this time of year for the last five years.

The United States military will invest more than USD 14 billion in repairing ports and waterways, as well as helping coastal villages facing natural disasters and extreme weather events, according to Bloomberg. In a statement, the White House said more than 500 projects were planned in 52 states and territories, and hoped they would compensate for decades of underinvestment that made infrastructure vulnerable to climate change. USD 4 billion will be used to improve ports and inland waterways. Another USD 5 billion will be used to protect coastal cities. Ports have been the focus of the White House since the beginning of problems in supply chains and the record demand for imported goods from American consumers. The army's plan is to repair outdated infrastructure and expand ports to make them more accessible to larger ships.

Afghanistan has lost more than half a million jobs since the Taliban took power, and the ensuing economic crisis is expected to increase that number to more than 900,000 by the middle of this year, according to an International Labor Organization (ILO) estimate, cited by Bloomberg. Employment in Afghanistan fell 8% in the third quarter of last year, reflecting job losses amid economic uncertainty surrounding the country, the ILO said in a statement. The most severely affected are women, whose employment rate has shrunk by at least 16%. The employment crisis has exacerbated Afghanistan's problems since the Taliban took power in mid-August last year. The United Nations estimates that more than half of the country's nearly 40 million people are facing severe famine, with 1 million children at risk of dying in the harsh winter. By mid-2022, 97% of the population may be living in poverty, compared to around 72% in 2020.