According to the preliminary data the Industrial Production Index, seasonally adjusted , decreased by 2.3% in December 2018 as compared to November 2018, reported the National Statistical Institute. In December 2018 the working day adjusted Industrial Production Index fall by 3.8% in comparison with the same month of 2017. In December 2018 as compared to November 2018, the seasonally adjusted Industrial Production Index decreased in the manufacturing by 2.7%, while the production rose in the mining and quarrying industry by 1.2%, and in the electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply by 0.9%. The most significant production decreases in the manufacturing were registered in the manufacture of motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers by 25.4%, in the manufacture of fabricated metal products, except machinery and equipment by 25.0%, in the manufacture of other transport equipment by 24.5%, in the manufacture of beverages by 9.0%.

Bulgaria's retail sales at constant prices rose by 3.6% year-on-year in December, after adding 6.5% in November, the country's statistical office, NSI, said on Friday, citing preliminary working day adjusted data. On a seasonally-adjusted monthly comparison basis, retail trade turnover at constant prices edged down by 0.3% in December, after remaining unchanged month-on-month in November, NSI said in a statement.

Automotive rubber products manufacturer Teklas Bulgaria, a wholly-owned unit of Turkey's Teklas Kauçuk Sanayi ve Ticaret, intends to invest over BGN 30 million in a new manufacturing plant in Vratsa. The construction works of the first phase of the project will take six months to complete. The company will initially employ 500 people at the new factory in nortwestern Bulgaria and double their number at a later stage. Teklas Bulgaria is now due to choose the exact site of the factory, after Vratsa municipality offered several possible locations. Subsequently, the company will need to obtain approval from the city council. Teklas Bulgaria currently has a manufacturing plant in the city of Kardzhali.

Bulgarian public gas supplier Bulgargaz plans to propose a 0.49% cut in the wholesale price of natural gas, to be valid in the second quarter of 2019. According to the draft proposal, the price will fall by BGN 0.22 to BGN 44.58 per MWh, excluding VAT and excise duty. Bulgargaz will submit its final proposal for approval by the energy regulator on March 3. Bulgarian energy regulations require Bulgargaz to set the gas price quarterly, taking into account global oil prices and the lev/dollar exchange rate. The Energy and Water Regulatory Commission (EWRC) has the final say on 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. Bulgaria currently imports almost all the natural gas it needs from Russia via a pipeline crossing Ukraine, Moldova and Romania.

Bulgaria's Convenience, which operates online grocery shop eBag.bg, will seek to raise BGN 1.9 million in an upcoming capital increase, according to commercial register documents. Convenience intends to issue 6,250 Class A shares at a price of BGN 96 apiece, and 10,914 Class B shares at a price of BGN 116.48 per share. In November 2018, Bulgarian venture capital fund Eleven Ventures said that it has decided to invest between EUR 100,000 and EUR 300,000 in eBag.bg. Online grocery shop eBag.bg offers more than 11,000 products and makes over 250 daily deliveries in Sofia.

A Bulgarian company has built two tunnels in Serbia for EUR 100 million. A few days ago the construction of the facilities on the highway from Nis to Skopje was completed. It is part of the European Corridor number 10, which departs from Salzburg, passes through Ljubljana, Zagreb, Belgrade, Nis, Skopje and Veles and reaches Thessaloniki. Contractor of the contract in Serbia is Euro Alliance Tunnels, which has done the job for less than 5 years. One of the tunnels is 2 km long and the other one - 4 km long, making it the longest on the Balkans. Because of the good work, Euro Alliance Tunnels has invitations to build further tunnels on a highway between Nis and Kosovo, where work would start in the summer. There were to be built 22 facilities with a total length of 19 km.

Bulgarian tobacco trader Shumen Tabac intends to enter into a BGN 15 million loan deal between cigarette maker Blagoevgrad BT and First Investment Bank as guarantor of Blagoevgrad BT. Shumen Tabac and Blagoevgrad BT are both majority owned by Bulgartabac Holding. Shumen Tabac also plans to pledge as loan collateral its real estate assets located near Shumen, in northeastern Bulgaria. The shareholders of Shumen Tabac will vote on the proposal on March 8. Blagoevgrad BT signed the BGN 15 million loan deal with First Investment Bank in August 2018. According to data from Shumen Tabac's annual financial statement, the company's assets amounted to BGN 3.7 million at the end of 2018. Shumen Tabac's net loss widened to BGN 301,000 in 2018 from BGN 297,000 in 2017.

Bulgaria's Central Cooperative Bank (CCB) said that its non-consolidated net profit fell to BGN 33 million in 2018 from BGN 36.8 million the year before. The lender's net interest income declined to BGN 112.8 million last year from BGN 118.8 million in 2017. Net fee and commission income edged up to BGN 44.4 million in 2018 compared to BGN 44.1 million a year earlier. The bank's operating expenses amounted to BGN 124.7 million last year, up from BGN 119.9 million in 2017. CCB's assets stood at BGN 5.6 billion at the end of 2018, up from BGN 5.4 billion a year earlier. CCB was Bulgaria's eight largest lender by assets at the end of last year.

France and Germany have reached a compromise that will allow Berlin to remain the lead negotiator with Russia on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, European leaders confirmed. "Regarding the gas directive, we have reached an agreement and this was possible because Germany and France worked closely together," German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a joint news conference with Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. "Today is a good day, and that is because of French-German cooperation." The two EU countries have now agreed to ensure oversight will come from the "territory and territorial sea of the member state where the first interconnection point is located." Merkel called the pipeline is a "purely economic project" that will guarantee cheaper, more reliable gas supplies. France's Foreign Ministry had earlier signaled its intention to vote for changes to the EU's Third Energy Package Gas Directive regulating gas imports. France had said it would support EU oversight of new offshore energy pipelines in a move that could have quashed the undersea pipeline plans between Russia and Germany. After the deal was struck, French President Emmanuel Macron's government was keen to stress that "there is no French-German crisis."

India could lose a vital U.S. trade concession, under which it enjoys zero tariffs on $5.6 billion of exports to the United States, amid a widening dispute over its trade and investment policies. A move to withdraw the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) from India, the world’s largest beneficiary of a scheme that has been in force since the 1970s, would be the strongest punitive action against India since President Donald Trump took office in 2017 vowing to reduce the U.S. deficit with large economies. Trump has repeatedly called out India for its high tariffs. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has courted foreign investment as part of his Make-in-India campaign to turn India into a manufacturing hub and deliver jobs to the millions of youth entering the workforce. Trump, for his part, has pushed for U.S. manufacturing to return home as part of his Make America Great Again campaign. The trigger for the latest downturn in trade ties was India’s new rules on e-commerce that restrict the way Amazon.com Inc and Walmart-backed Flipkart do business in a rapidly growing online market set to touch $200 billion by 2027.

Thailand launched a Huawei Technologies 5G test bed, even as the United States urges its allies to bar the Chinese telecoms giant from building next-generation mobile networks. Huawei, the world's top producer of telecoms equipment and second-biggest maker of smartphones, has been facing mounting international scrutiny amid fears China could use its equipment for espionage, a concern the company says is unfounded. The 5G test bed in Thailand, the United States' oldest ally in Asia, will be Huawei's first in Southeast Asia. Thailand's cooperation with Huawei on the test bed does not mean it is not concerned about security issues, Minister of Digital Economy Pichet Durongkaveroj told Reuters at the launch. "We keep a close watch on the allegations worldwide. However, this 5G test bed project is a testing period for the country," Pichet added. "We can make observations which will be useful to either confirm or disconfirm the allegations." Pichet was speaking at the test site in Chonburi, the heart of the Thai military government's $45 billion economic project — the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) — about 90 km southeast of Bangkok. Vendors like Nokia, Ericsson and Thai telecoms operators have also set up 5G labs at the site.