Digitization can be the next major driver of Bulgaria's growth and the country can add up to EUR 8 billion to its gross domestic product by 2025. And for the entire CEE region, the contribution could reach EUR 200 billion, according to a report "The Rise of Digital Competitors: How Digitization Can Become the Next Engine of Economic Growth in Central and Eastern Europe" by McKinsey, a global consulting company. The report measures the size and growth rate of digital economies at regional level in ten countries: Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, Hungary, Croatia and the Czech Republic. The analysis recognizes that the ten countries from Central and Eastern European examined in this paper reported an average of 114% increase in GDP per capita between 1996 and 2017, but in recent years traditional growth engines have started to weaken. Economies in Central and Eastern Europe, including Bulgaria, are less capitalized compared to more advanced Western Europeans (the capital is 80% lower than in the largest EU countries), labor costs are growing at low and record low levels - an average of 5.2% in 2018 in Bulgaria.

Bulgaria maintained its position in the Bloomberg ranking for innovative countries despite the slight increase in its overall rating. The country continues to be in the Top 50, taking up last year's 41st place. South Korea, in turn, retains the crown of a global leader in the innovation sector, although Germany's progress puts the largest European economy almost on an equal footing with the Asian side. This shows the data from the Bloomberg Innovation Index for 2019. This year, the United States climbed eight places in the rankings, after the country's lower educational performance in 2018 put the country out of the Top 10 for the first time. Bloomberg's annual ranking for the seventh consecutive year analyzes individual countries on the basis of dozens of criteria, using seven core benchmarks, including R&D, industrial capacity and concentration of high-tech public companies.

The Stara Zagora company for production of machinery and equipment for the food and other industries - Hraninvest - Hranmashkomplekt will invest BGN 4.5 million within a year and a half. Machines will be purchased to optimize existing industries and enable the company to launch new technological processes to increase its competitiveness on world markets. In 2016 the company invested BGN 2.5 million in new machines. It has already managed to robotize partially the production on part of the consumables it uses for the sifting machines it produces. It works with global companies such as Gea, Bosch, KHS, AAF, and the output goes entirely for export. The enterprise is part of the structure of Holding Zagora, which includes 13 other companies, including Progress and Preskov. Last year was the best for Hraninvest HMK in the past 10 years, with the company reporting a 6% turnover growth to BGN 25.5 million. The company employs 500 people.

Bulgartransgaz started the expansion of the gas transmission infrastructure to the Bulgarian-Serbian border. This is a 474 kilometer gas pipeline. The estimated value of the public procurement contract amounts to BGN 2.286 bln, excluding VAT. The company information shows that the contract is announced in connection with the possibility of extending the gas transmission network of Bulgartransgaz in order to increase the security of natural gas supplies for Bulgaria, the neighboring countries and regions, as well as for reaffirming the role of Bulgaria as a gas distribution country in the EU region. In the present procedure, there is a need for return on investment for the purpose of financing and, respectively, monthly repayment of the contractor's outstanding remuneration for a longer period of time, the information says.

Shumen-based producer Lavena has signed an investment bank loan worth BGN 4.505 million with United Bulgarian Bank (UBB). According to the document, the loan must be repaid by March 2023, which will be used for the expansion of the company's business. Lavena, which is best known for its Bochko series of baby products, announced in October last year that it would invest BGN 5 million to expand its production in Shumen by 5 203 square meters. Then it became clear that part of the project was both the production and warehouse building, and the expected price was BGN 4.990 million excluding VAT. The construction must be completed by the end of July this year. Lavena exports to 43 countries around the world, including China, Australia, England, India, the United States and others.

The Spanish fashion line MANGO plans to expand its presence on the Balkans, including Bulgaria, in 2019. For now, the company has two sites in the capital. According to information from the Spanish edition of Lavanguardia, the chain will double the number of its stores in the country, and in the first half of the year it should open one in the capital and in Varna. The chain said they would open 27 new sites in the coming months. The company entered Bulgaria in 2013. To date, the chain in our country is managed by its daughter company Mango Bulgaria.

Bulgarian car battery manufacturer Elhim Iskra booked a sales revenue of BGN 36.9 million in 2018, just below the forecast it made last month. The company's revenue increased to BGN 34.9 million in 2017 from BGN 33.7 million a year earlier. In January 2019, Elhim Iskra expects to generate BGN 3.43 million of sales revenue. Last month, Elhim Iskra said it expected to record a sales revenue of BGN 2.1 million in December that would bringing its total sales for 2018 to BGN 37 million. Elhim Iskra is part of blue-chip diversified group Stara Planina Hold.

More than five decades after sealing their post-war reconciliation, France and Germany aim to inspire greater unity in a fractured Europe by further deepening their relationship – though the French have no plans to share their precious UN seat. French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel met on Tuesday in the German border city of Aachen, known in France as Aix-la-Chapelle, to sign a new partnership between their two countries – exactly 56 years after the Elysée Treaty, signed by their predecessors Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer, sealed Franco-German friendship after World War II. In its own words, the new agreement – referred to in the French press as the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle – aims to “deepen [the two countries’] cooperation in foreign affairs, defence, external and internal security and development, and at the same time work on strengthening the ability of Europe to act independently”. In so doing, its proponents hope to breathe new life into a partnership – dubbed the “Franco-German couple” in France – that has been a cornerstone of European integration, and offset the centrifugal forces that are tugging at the 28-member European Union amid mounting nationalism and Euroscepticism.

The Democratic-controlled House approved a bill that would reiterate strong congressional support for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization alliance amid recent reports that President Donald Trump raised the idea of withdrawing from NATO several times last year. "It's so disturbing -- troubling to see the United States sending mixed signals about our commitment to the alliance, or treating it as a burden," said House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat, at a news conference on Capitol Hill. "You know what a burden would be?" he asked. "A burden would be for the United States to try and conduct foreign policy without allies, without 28 other countries that share our values and have fought alongside American troops, sharing the burden of lost blood and treasure at times." Trump has been clear in his criticism of NATO and has knocked allies for failing to pay enough for their defense.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is leaning toward accepting a postwar peace treaty with Russia if Moscow hands over two of the four islands contested by the two countries, Japanese government sources said Sunday. Abe, who is hoping to reach a broad agreement on the peace treaty issue later this year, said he wanted to take as much as time as possible to hold “candid” talks with Putin, as he left for Moscow on Monday afternoon. The new approach now under consideration to settle the territorial dispute marks a departure from Tokyo’s long-held position of aiming for the return of all of the islands off Hokkaido, which the Soviet Union seized after Japan’s surrender in World War II in 1945. The territorial dispute over the Russian-held islands off Hokkaido, called the Northern Territories in Japan and the Southern Kurils in Russia, has kept the two countries from signing a postwar peace deal. “It is not realistic,” a senior government official said, referring to whether it is possible to persuade Russia to also hand over Etorofu and Kunashiri, two of the islands which account for 93 percent of the total area of the four in dispute.