Financial news

Bulgarian companies plan to shave investment costs by around 14% on 2009 levels this year, according to a poll by the National Statistical Institute (NSI) in the second half of March. The reduction on planned costs for acquisition of tangible and intangible assets in the industrial sector follows the 34% cutback in 2009 versus 2008. Private sector’s share in the total volume of expected spending on purchases of long-term assets in 2010 nears 67%. Company executives plan to squeeze their investment programmes by some 28% compared with 2009. An almost 39% increase is expected in the public sector, with energy and water-related sectors poised to slice off the biggest share of 6.5%. Meanwhile, foreign direct investment (FDI) crashed 20-fold to a modest BGN 28 million in January and February 2010 compared with the same period of 2009.

	Mineral Fuels, Tailoring Products, Canning, Perfumery and Cosmetics, Furniture, Meat Products, Wine, Wood-processing Industry

Concessions

Canadian mining firm Dundee Precious Metals said that Bulgaria's Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) has revoked the company's permit to build a metals processing plant at Chelopech. The decision confirms an earlier ruling made by a three-judge panel in November 2009 and is final, Dundee said. The decision revoked the environmental impact assessment (EIA) resolution issued by the Ministry of Environment and Waters and was based on three reasons: the two and one-half year delay between the public hearings of the EIA and the date the EIA resolution was issued; the impacted communities were incorrectly defined by the Environment Ministry; and technology proposed was deemed not to be based on best available techniques on an industrial scale operation.

Companies

Bulgarian construction companies and their workers are starting a four-day protest at the Novo Selo training ground, a facility used by the US Army. Representatives of 21 construction companies from Southeast Bulgaria have been protesting throughout April as they claim money owed to them for work their performed as subcontractors on the Novo Selo training ground. The protesters are planning to blockade a local road leading to the military training ground which is used jointly by the Bulgarian and US armed forces under an inter-governmental agreement. The companies say the contractor, the German company Bilfinger Berger, owes them several million BGN for their services, and demand that the US Army Corps of Engineers, which finances the Novo Selo training ground, execute the necessary control over the carrying out of the contract.

In order to stabilize the Bulgarian stock market a large stake from the Bulgarian Energy Holding (BEH) should be immediately floated on the Bulgarian Stock Exchange, according to analysts, financial experts, directors of asset management companies and economists. Additional measures could include amendments to the regulation for management of pension funds, the experts said. Most of the participants believe that at least 49% of the state’s stake in BSE should be floated. Lower percentage will not have the desired effect, experts believe. 76% of approve BEH sell-off through the stock market. 18% of experts believe that listing of BEH on BSE will have limited effect, as this is not enough for attracting investors to the market. 6% oppose the idea with the argument that floating BEH will have no effect.

Transferring Heat Supply-Sofia back to the municipality without its debts is impossible, the Ministry of Economy said. Such a move would be treated as unauthorised state aid and deficit on the fiscal budget. The economy ministry came up with the stance after meeting with the finance ministry. The two ministries are yet to present their stance with Sofia municipal authorities. Heat Supply-Sofia returned to the government’s wing in 2008 when Bulgaria’s largest municipality transferred a 58.2% stake in a bid to curb debts. Sofia City Council chairman Andrey Ivanov said the municipality will be seeking out a way to get the utility back only with consumer debts. Ivanov explained that it is “in the city’s interest” to leave the utility’s debts to Bulgargaz with the state as they had been accumulated thanks to the “wrong attitude of the former government” and its policy on gas and heating utility tariffs formation.

Notorious hotelier and businessman Nikolay Banev wants BGN 30 million to allegedly save his enterprise Polimeri JSC - Devnia. Last year Banev wrote a letter to Boyko Borisov as a prime minister and asked him "to support" the provision of that credit line, the plant needed for "investment and working capital" of production. Banev describes that Polimeri is the only manufacturer of chemical products of strategic importance to the economy in Bulgaria. The data for the production, however, are from 2007. Nothing is said that in fact most installations of the plant do not operate for three or four years and does not currently produce anything. Moreover - debts of Polimeri under inter-company debt is roughly as much as the requested loan. The entity has even distributed loans to individual units of the holding AKB Corporation Holding. Thus no bank would give credit to the company.

Europe

Mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson posted its first quarterly profit in nearly two years Friday, boosted by gains from high-end devices such as smartphones and cost cuts. Net profit for the first quarter was euro21 million ($29 million), compared with a loss of euro293 million a year earlier. Although sales dipped in the three months ended March 31 to euro1.4 billion, from euro1.74 billion, the gross margin of the LM Ericsson and Sony Corp. joint venture still jumped to 30.6 percent from a previous 8.4 percent. Sony Ericsson CEO Bert Nordberg said new high-end devices including the smartphones Xperia X10 and Vivaz, which began shipping at the end of the first quarter, had been "well received" by the market.

America

Bank of America Corp reported higher-than-expected first-quarter earnings on Friday as it set aside less money to cover bad loans. The largest U.S. bank by assets said net income increased to $2.83 billion, or 28 cents per share, from $2.81 billion, or 44 cents per share, a year earlier. "With each day that passes, the 2010 story appears to be one of continuing credit recovery, and our results reflect a gradually improving economy," Chief Executive Brian Moynihan said in the earnings announcement. Consumer credit problems caused the bank to report losses in the third and fourth quarters of 2009, when large U.S. banks were dealing with the fallout from the global financial crisis. 

Asia

The Bank of Japan’s scope to beat deflation is limited and the government should focus on job creation to spur demand, said Yoshiyasu Ono, an economic adviser to Finance Minister Naoto Kan. “It’s impossible to ease deflation and put the economy on an inflationary track just because the BOJ relaxes its grip on credit,” Ono, 59, a professor at the Institute of Social and Economic Research of Osaka University, said in an interview in Osaka on April 14. “There is no way prices can rise when things aren’t selling. The reason things don’t sell is because people are hoarding money.” Kan, who appointed Ono as an adviser in February, has eased pressure on the central bank since it doubled a credit program in March amid his calls for it to do more to stem deflation.

Regional Museum of History – Veliko Tarnovo

The Regional Museum of History in Veliko Tarnovo is the oldest and the biggest historical museum outside Sofia. It was established in 1871. The fund of the museum keeps over 200,000 exhibits of the high antiquity to the newest history. Some of them are unique for national and European history – the Hotnishko Gold (the oldest gold in the world), golden decorations from Thracian tombs, golden and silver coins of different rulers, marble statues, medieval ring-seals, wall-paints from medieval churches, masterpiece of the Christian arts from 12th to 19th century, Nedelnik written by Sofronii of Vratsa, collections of medals, honors, coins, seals, signs; ethnography collections of jewellery, cloths, pottery; ritual goods and etc. Some of them are presented in the exhibitions, preserved areas, house-museums, and the collections: Architectural museum preserved area Tsarevets (picture in the left ), Archeological museum, National Revival and Constitutive National Assembly museum, New History museum, the Sarafkina house, the house-museum of P.R.Slaveikov, the churches St. Dimitar of Thessaloniki, and St. Apostles Peter and Pavel, Architectural museum preserved area Arbanasi, and others.

On that day:  Singing Rocks