Loans to Bulgaria's non-government sector rose by an annual 7.8% to BGN 58.1 billion at the end of March, the central bank, BNB, said. The loans at the end of the third month of this year were equal to 50.2% of Bulgaria's forecast gross domestic product in 2019. Loans to non-financial corporations amounted to BGN 33.1 billion at the end of March, up by 5.3% year-on-year. Loans to households rose by an annual 11% to BGN 22.2 billion, while leans to non-financial corporations totalled BGN 2.8 billion, up 14.7% on the year.

Deposits of Bulgaria's non-government sector rose by an annual 9.3% to BGN 79.1 billion at the end of March, the central bank, BNB, said. Deposits at the end of March were equal to 68.4% of Bulgaria's estimated gross domestic product in 2019. Deposits of households increased by an annual 8.9% to BGN 52.4 billion at the end of March. Deposits of non-financial corporations totalled BGN 23.4 billion, up by 7.8% year-on-year, while deposits of financial corporations added 26.8% to BGN 3.4 billion.

China Machinery Engineering Corporation (CMEC), China's largest construction and machinery company, signed a EUR 120 mln deal with Logistics Center-Varna EAD for joint development of a new infrastructure in Port Varna, the largest in Bulgaria. This is the first port project of the Chinese company in Bulgaria. CMEC, owned by the state-controlled China National Machinery Industry Corporation (Sinomach), will be responsible as the main contractor for project optimization, materials delivery, construction and installation. The total project duration is expected to be three years. This is the first port construction project, invested by a Chinese company in Bulgaria, and is a project for infrastructure and connectivity in Central and Eastern Europe at Beijing's initiative ‘One Belt, One Road’.

Automotive rubber products manufacturer Teklas Bulgaria, a wholly-owned unit of Turkey's Teklas Kaucuk Sanayi ve Ticaret, will sign an agreement to acquire a plot of land in the city of Vratsa on April 24. Teklas Bulgaria intends to build a BGN 22 million production facility on the land plot. The plant in northwestern Bulgaria is expected to employ 500 people initially. Teklas Bulgaria currently has six plants located in the cities of Kardzhali and Krumovgrad, in the country's south. Elsewhere in Southeast Europe, Teklas is also present in Serbia.

Humanic Bulgaria, a unit of Austrian footwear retailer Leder&Schuh, will open its first store in Plovdiv, the second largest city in the country, on April 24. The store will be located in Plovdiv Plaza shopping mall and will have a shopping area of 660 sq m. It will be the first Humanic store opening in Bulgaria since 2012. The company operates four stores in Bulgaria's biggest cities - Sofia, Varna and Burgas. Leder&Schuh entered the Bulgarian market in 2010. The Leder&Schuh Group, one of the largest shoe companies in Europe, is active in the SEE region with its eleven Humanic stores in Romania, six in Slovenia and four in Croatia.

Bulgarian farming group Agria Group Holding is planning to invest EUR 4 million in 2019. Agria Group Holding intends to spend EUR 2.75 million for buying farm land. A further BGN 750,000 will be invested in purchase of agricultural equipment, transport and logistics, while EUR 500,000 will be invested in the company's storage facilities. Agria Group Holding will finance 40% of the expenses through own funds, and the remaining 60% through long-term debt instruments.

DesignThinking.bg, the Bulgarian design company, unites forces with Berlin-based international company for business innovation and organizational transformation - launchlabs. Together, they create a company in Sofia named launchlabs, which will serve as a regional office and will serve customers in Central and Eastern Europe as a priority. The Bulgarian side holds a majority stake in the joint venture. The transaction value is not officially announced. The team of DesignThinking.bg is preserved, but it will grow gradually within the new venture. The studio wants to hire another 4-5 people by the end of 2020, mainly with expertise in implementing innovative projects and organizational transformations. Up to now, 25% of DesignThinking's revenue came from Bulgarian companies, and about 50% from international companies with representation in Bulgaria. The remaining 25% are related to work outside Bulgaria. Among the portfolio of clients of DesignThinking.bg are ING, Raiffeisenbank, UniCredit, SocieteGenerale, Telenor, A1, Vmware, Ubisoft, Konica Minolta. Since last year, the company has been working with Bulgarian companies such as Ciela and Econt.

Bulgaria's Commission for Protection of Competition has fined local company Van Holding, which operates supermarkets under the Fantastico brand, with BGN 162,256 over the use of misleading advertising. In October last year Van Holding organised a game, in which customers could register their receipts from Fantastico stores in order to potentially win various prizes but did not mention that the minimum total price of the purchases should be BGN 25. The fine represents 0.1% of Van Holding's net sales revenue in 2018. Van Holding operates 14 Fantastico stores - 13 in Sofia and one in the nearby town of Elin Pelin. The Fantastico supermarket chain comprises 42 stores, of which 40 in Sofia, and one each in the towns of Elin Pelin and Kyustendil.

The European Parliament voted to interconnect a series of border-control, migration, and law enforcement systems into a gigantic, biometrics-tracking, searchable database of EU and non-EU citizens. This new database will be known as the Common Identity Repository (CIR) and is set to unify records on over 350 million people. Per its design, CIR will aggregate both identity records (names, dates of birth, passport numbers, and other identification details) and biometrics (fingerprints and facial scans), and make its data available to all border and law enforcement authorities. Its primary role will be to simplify the jobs of EU border and law enforcement officers who will be able to search a unified system much faster, rather than search through separate databases individually. "The systems covered by the new rules would include the Schengen Information System, Eurodac, the Visa Information System (VIS) and three new systems: the European Criminal Records System for Third Country Nationals (ECRIS-TCN), the Entry/Exit System (EES) and the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS)," EU officials said.

Goldman Sachs expects a limited impact on crude prices stemming from United States’ decision to end exemptions from sanctions for countries still buying oil from Iran, even though the timing is likely to have caught energy market participants by surprise. “While we acknowledge the near-term upside price risks, we reiterate our fundamentally derived Brent price trading range of $70-75 per barrel for the second quarter of 2019,” the U.S. investment bank said in a research note published Monday, Reuters reported. The world’s largest economy said Monday that from May 1, it would eliminate all waivers allowing eight economies to buy Iranian oil without facing U.S. sanctions. These eight economies that were initially allowed to continue buying Iranian crude without facing penalties include: China, India, Japan, Turkey, Italy, Greece, South Korea and Taiwan. Oil prices jumped more than 2% in the previous session, hitting their highest level this year amid intensifying concern about global supplies after the U.S. announced a further clampdown on Iran’s oil exports.

UBS, Invesco and J.P. Morgan topped Shanghai-based Z-Ben Advisors’ annual rankings for the 25 best foreign money managers in China. Data was collected as of December 2018, and scored firms by three business lines: onshore, outbound and inbound. For UBS, it was the second year the Switzerland-based asset manager ranked first. The company has been investing in China for 20 years and has also become a front-runner in building a domestic securities business. In November, UBS became the first foreign bank to receive Beijing’s approval to take a majority stake in its joint venture with China Guodian Capital. For the last decades, previous policy limited foreign banks to minority stakes, giving local partners more control. In the last 12 months, some Chinese stocks and bonds were added to global benchmark indexes run by MSCI and Bloomberg. Analysts expect the inclusion will drive billions of dollars in fund flows to China in the next few years.