The amount of the average social security income in Bulgaria for the month of April 2024 is BGN 1,639.58, the National Social Security Institute announced. It rises compared to March, when it was BGN 1,633.53. The average monthly insurance income for the country for the period from 01/05/2023 to 04/30/2024 is BGN 1,515.40. It also increased compared to the previous month, when it amounted to BGN 1,498. BGN 44. The determined average monthly insurance income for the country for the specified period is used to calculate the amounts of the newly granted pensions in the month of May 2024, according to Art. 70, para. 3 of the Social Security Code.

The expected wheat harvest for 2024 is between 6.1 and 6.3 million tons, announced the Minister of Agriculture and Food Georgi Tahov at the start of the harvest campaign in Plovdiv. It will be harvested from 11 million acres. Last year, 6.6 million tons were collected. The forecast for barley is 800 thousand tons, sown on 1.6 million acres. Good quality is expected due to the favorable climatic conditions at the moment and yields above 500 kg/ha. Storage warehouses have 80% free volume.

Out of a total of 9,595 machines, just over 140 were defective during Sunday's parliamentary elections, which is less than 1.5%. The global trend is a deviation of up to 2.5%, said Ivan Todorov from Ciela Norma JSC. From "Siela Norma" JSC they ordered an expertise for problems with the machines during the 2 in 1 vote. "The bottles should already be changed, but the CEC does not allow it. They have a shelf life and it is not a minimum of 10 years as with machines", added Ivan Todorov. NOVA NEWS

Vivacom overtakes Yettel and is already second among telecoms in our country in terms of number of subscribers, it is clear from the draft annual report of the Commission for the Regulation of Communications, on which the Commission for the Protection of Competition has drawn up an opinion. After a jump of 1.2%, Vivacom currently has a 32.4% share, while Yettel is down 0.7% to 31.4%. The leader is A1 with 36.2%. In terms of revenue, however, Yettel has a "significant lead", it is clear from the KRS report - we are talking about a share of 40.7% (up 2.7%) over A1 (29.9% and a drop of 4.3%) and Vivacom (29.4%, up 1.6%). For the third year in a row, the number of ported mobile numbers is increasing - in 2023 they will be 306,338. The TV market is estimated by KRS at BGN 541,424 million, of which 92.7% are revenues from retail services. As of 2023, the leader is Vivacom with 36.3% of subscribers and 32.7% of revenues, and "Bulsatcom" is third - with 22.2% of subscribers and 26% of revenues. This means that 58.5% of TV subscribers in our country last year belonged to the two companies, which already have the same owner. A1 remains in second place with 27.3% of subscribers and 28.9% of revenue. In terms of Internet delivery, Vivacom is the leader (32.2% of subscribers and 28.8% of revenues), Bulsatcom is third again (5.4% of subscribers and 3.9% of revenues), and between them ranks A1. IPTV is the most preferred TV delivery technology, with subscribers growing to nearly 44 percent, while those with satellite or cable TV are declining. In order to have IPTV, there must be internet connectivity. Almost 60 percent of the subscribers have optics to the building or to the home. Fixed access via mobile networks is also growing in popularity, being the third most used technology. Already 92.6% of subscribers have access at a speed of at least 30 megabits per second. For mobile networks, over 70 percent of subscribers still use LTE/4G, but nearly a fifth are already on 5G after significant growth in 2023.

The project of the defense company International Armored Group (IAG) of the Bulgarian emigrant to the USA Anton Stefov to build a plant in Burgas continues to go according to plan, with construction expected to be completed by autumn. The construction of the plant started in March last year, and the investor is Stefov's local company "International Armored Group BG". The company owns 150 decares of land in the "Industrial and Logistics Park - Burgas", and the built-up area of ​​the main building and the additional units that will be located on the site is about 15 thousand square meters. The construction has been assigned to the Burgas company "Electra" and its subcontractors, and it is expected to be completed by September. The company was certified as a class A investor, with the state committing to finance the construction of a new street with rain collectors, connection to the national road network, lighting, sidewalks, surveillance cameras and potable water supply. The IAG group has a long list of products to be manufactured in Burgas. This includes various types of armored vehicles that are used for peacekeeping missions, personal protection, banking and the oil industry. The company covers segments such as tactical vehicles, armored personnel carriers, riot control vehicles, valuables vehicles, ambulances, armored jeeps and luxury sedans. Currently, IAG has three production bases - in the USA, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey, and the fourth one will be in Burgas. The development of new defense products continues. Preparations are underway for the launch of a series of drones for rescue, reconnaissance and emergency teams in collaboration with other Bulgarian partners. A new project is the development of wheeled and tracked robots, which is being done together with several universities and BAS. From 2021, the company is conducting certification tests according to NATO standards at the test site near the village of Zmeyovo, after receiving consent from the international laboratory TNO in the Netherlands to jointly carry out some tests here. The United Arab Emirates is currently working on the fifth generation of the "Rila 8x8" machine, which will be of the "amphibious" type - in addition to being able to participate in various ground combat operations, it will also be able to overcome water obstacles. The investment in Burgas will not be able to fit into the initial estimate of around BGN 20 million due to inflation and the general increase in the price of materials and services. The initial plans were to start production with 50 people, and in the long term the workers were to exceed 300 people.

The average salary at Devnia's largest soda plant, Solvay Sodi, including bonuses, lump sums and 13th salary, is roughly twice the national average. This is indicated by the company in its opinion, on the occasion of employee protests, organized by the trade union organizations of KT "Support" and KNSB. Their demands are an additional increase in the basic remuneration by BGN 150 per person, starting from July 1, 2024, as well as the return of the 10 salaries and retirement benefits, which were terminated two years ago by a previous collective labor agreement. The factory notes that the package of benefits goes beyond what is provided for in the Labor Code, including a larger amount of paid leave, higher pay for night work and home duty, for overtime work, as well as additional paid leave for the birth of a child , health insurance, life insurance, etc. The average length of service in the company is 24 years, and voluntary turnover is less than 2%. After five months of negotiations and improved proposals, an agreement on a new collective labor agreement for 2024 was reached with only one of the three trade unions in the company with which, according to the provisions of the Labor Code, a valid collective labor agreement (CLA) was signed . The signed CTD preserves and upgrades the benefits and the social package of the workers, including a two-fold increase in wages (from April and from September), improvement of additional pension contributions, vouchers, etc. All employees have been informed about the concluded KTD.

Two of the four members of the board of directors of the company "Sports Properties Bulgarian Army" JSC have been replaced. The company was created by the state in the person of the Ministry of Youth and Sports (MMS) and CSKA with the aim of renovating the "Bulgarian Army" stadium. On the part of the state, the sports journalist Georgi Banov, who will also be the executive director, enters the management. He replaces the previous representative of MMC's subsidiary "Serdika Sport Properties" EAD Danail Dimov. On the proposal of "Arena CSKA" Ltd, Daniela Asenova replaces Iskra Grigorova. Angel Borisov, who is CSKA's executive director, and Georgi Georgiev remain on the board of directors. Years ago, Banov was an adviser to Krasen Kralev, while the latter headed the sports ministry.

EU member states paid out 1.882 trillion euros in pensions in 2021, which is equivalent to 12.9 percent of the Community's GDP, Eurostat reports. Although total pension expenditure rose by 2.8 per cent from 2020, its share of GDP fell by 0.7 per cent to 13.6 per cent then. Pension costs vary widely among member countries. The ratio is highest in Greece, where it reaches 16.4 percent of GDP, followed by Italy (16.3 percent), Austria (15.0 percent) and France (14.9 percent). At the opposite pole is Ireland, where pensions make up just 4.5 per cent of GDP, followed by Malta (6.4 per cent), Hungary (7.0 per cent) and Lithuania (7.1 per cent). The ratio in Bulgaria amounts to 7.95 percent. In 2021, 27.2 percent of Europeans received pensions. The largest share is occupied by old-age pensions (79.9 percent).

Bill Gates and his energy company "TerraPower" (TerraPower) are starting construction in Wyoming of a nuclear power plant of a new generation, which, according to the billionaire, could "revolutionize" the way energy is generated, AP reported. The company applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in March for a permit to build an advanced nuclear reactor that uses sodium, not water, for cooling. If approved, the plant will become commercially operational once it is built. The site is adjacent to PacifiCorp's Naughton coal-fired power plant, which will stop burning coal in 2026 and natural gas a decade later, the company said. Nuclear reactors operate without emitting planet-warming greenhouse gases. PacificCorp plans to get carbon-free power from the reactor and says it is weighing how much of that power to include in its long-term planning. Advanced reactors typically use a coolant other than water and operate at lower pressure and higher temperature. Such technology has existed for decades, but the US continues to build large, conventional water-cooled reactors as commercial power plants. The Wyoming project is the first time in about four decades that a company has attempted to bring an advanced reactor to the U.S. market commercially, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The company's sodium reactor demonstration project is a sodium-cooled fast reactor design with a molten salt energy storage system. The TerraPower project is expected to cost up to $4 billion, half of which will be provided by the US Department of Energy. This figure includes the first-of-its-kind reactor design and licensing costs, so future plants will cost significantly less. The most advanced nuclear reactors being developed in the US rely on a type of fuel - known as low-enriched high-analysis uranium - that is enriched to a higher percentage of the isotope uranium-235 than the fuel used by conventional reactors. TerraPower has pushed back its Wyoming launch date by two years to 2030 because Russia is the only commercial supplier of the fuel and is working with other companies to develop alternative supplies. Gates co-founded TeraPower in 2008 as a private-sector effort to push advanced nuclear power forward to provide safe, abundant, carbon-free energy. The company's 345-megawatt reactor can generate up to 500 megawatts at its peak, enough to meet the needs of 400,000 households. Terrapower said the first few reactors would focus on supplying electricity. But he envisions future reactors being built near industrial plants to also deliver high heat energy. Almost all industrial processes requiring high heat energy currently obtain it from burning fossil fuels. Heat from advanced reactors can be used to produce hydrogen, petrochemicals, ammonia and fertilizers, said John Kotek, vice president of the US Nuclear Energy Institute.