The Energy Committee in the National Assembly Friday approved amendments to the Energy Act which are aimed to liberalize the natural gas market in Bulgaria. With 12 votes in favour and 3 abstentions, the Committee okayed the draft provisions, which will create a gas trading platform. The meeting was attended by Energy Minister Temenuzhka Petkova, Energy and Water Regulatory Commission Chair Ivan Ivanov, the European Commission's Energy DG Deputy Director-General Klaus-Dieter Borchardt and the chief executives of Bulgargaz, Bulgartransgaz and the Bulgarian Energy Holding. Energy Committee Chair Valentin Nikolov said Bulgaria is a "natural hub" for gas distribution in the region because it is home to 80 per cent of the infrastructure. According to Borchardt, the country's development as a regional gas hub requires expanding its gas storage capacities.

Only 2% of Bulgarians aged between 20 and 64 worked part-time in 2018, their share being the lowest in the European Union, according to Eurostat. More women than men work part-time - 2% compared to 1.6%, which is the smallest difference between the representatives of the two sexes among the EU member states, according to data from the European statistics. In the Union as a whole, the share of those who worked part-time was 19%. By comparison, in 2005, this share reached 17% and since then has grown steadily, reaching 18% in 2010 and 19% in 2012, Eurostat notes. Among the Member States, the Netherlands has the largest proportion of part-time employees in the 20-64 age group of 47%, followed by Austria with 28% and Germany with 27%. In four member states, the share of part-time employees is up to 5% - Croatia and Slovakia (5%), Hungary (4%) and Bulgaria (2%).

The golf and spa complex Sveta Sofia near Elin Pelin, which had to be the center of a large-scale recreational-entertainment complex known as the "Bulgarian Las Vegas", has a new owner after the foreign investors from Bulgaria Development Holding Limited sold the property to a Bulgarian company, owned by the businessman Miroslav Pechev. The transaction is clear from documents in the Commercial Register, registered on June 20. The value of the deal so far is not public. The owner of the non-current assets (land, buildings and equipment) are valued at BGN 16.7 mln in the company's financial report for 2017. The former owner Bulgaria Development Holding Limited of Hong Kong investors acquired the golf complex in the period 2014 - 2015. These are terrains with an area of over 880 decares between the villages of Ravno Pole and Musachevo. There is a golf course, a club building, a spa complex, an auxiliary building and a training ground. Asian investors were making grand plans - to build a large recreational-entertainment complex around the golf course by acquiring another 1500 decares of state and municipal land in the area. They succeeded only a little - they bought 305 decares by the Elin Pelin municipality, which are now also being sold to the same buyer.

Rose oil producer Damascena invests another BGN 5 million in its ethnographic complex in the village of Skobelevo near Pavel Banya. The funds are invested in building an amphitheater with 500 seats, which was opened on Friday. The total invested funds amount to BGN 10 million and plans are to increase them by another BGN 2 million. The total investment in the creation of the Damascena complex already exceeds BGN 10 million. The management has set the task for the next 2-3 years that the number of tourists visiting the complex will reach 150,000 people a year. Damascena is one of the largest rose oil manufacturers and dealers. It grows about 500 decares of pink arches, which are close to the ethnographic complex. The company employs 120 people, but during the active season, when it becomes the rose-buck, the number reaches 500 people. Group revenues for 2018 are BGN 20 million. Over 90% of the output is for export - mainly France, Germany, USA, Turkey, China, India, Japan and Indonesia. The company has invested about BGN 1 million in a cosmetic production workshop, whose nomenclature is constantly growing.

Acronis Bulgaria received an A-class investment certificate from Emil Karanikolov, Minister of Economy. The company will invest BGN 1.2 million and will expand its activity with 130 new engineers. The aim of the project is to extend the company by creating a European Center for Research and Development on Cyber ​​Defense, AI and Blockchain projects. The expansion of Acronis Bulgaria's research center in Sofia is related to the development of a new product called Acronis Total Protection (ATP). This is a new solution that aims to make the service provider's business more granular and profitable, to cope with viral attacks and reduce operating costs. The new product will be based on proactive, artificial intelligence technologies fully integrated with a backup engine and is expected to become a leading product on the market thanks to core integration, immediate data recovery, multidisciplinary R & D team combined with client database and market experience. Singapore's Acronis acquired its native T-Soft in August 2018 and renamed it to Acronis Bulgaria. Then the IT company announced that it plans to invest USD 50 million and increase the team in Bulgaria with another 300 people.

Copper producer Aurubis Bulgaria said that its shareholders have endorsed the company's plan to distribute a total of BGN 202.4 million as dividend for 2018. The copper maker paid BGN 20.8 million as dividend for 2017, or BGN 1 per share. Aurubis Bulgaria's dividend payout will amount to a gross BGN 9.73 per share for 2018. The company's non-consolidated net profit fell to BGN 202.4 million in 2018 from BGN 393.6 million in 2017. Aurubis Bulgaria is a unit of Hamburg-based copper producer Aurubis.

Cosmetics producer Bulgarian Rose pocketed sales revenue of BGN 353,000 in May, exceeding its forecast for BGN 300,000 in monthly revenue. The company's accumulated sales in the first five months of the year amounted to BGN 1.72 million. Sales in June are projected at BGN 395,000. Bulgarian Rose generated revenue of BGN 1.72 million in the January-May period of 2018, and a further BGN 863,000 in June. Karlovo-based Bulgarian Rose, established in 1948, manufactures cosmetic products for face, body, and hair using rose oil and locally-grown herbs. Bulgarian Rose, part of blue-chip industrial group Stara Planina Hold, has stores in nine cities across Bulgaria.

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi repeated a dovish monetary policy message to European Union leaders on Friday, saying that any deterioration in economic conditions that would threaten a return to the ECB’s inflation would trigger additional stimulus from the bank. Draghi told the leaders that the economy of the 19 countries sharing the euro was now robust, but with increasing signs of weakness and that the economic rebound was weaker than expected with pervasive uncertainty in global trade for more than a year. “In the absence of improvement, such that a sustained return to the ECB’s inflation target is threatened, additional stimulus will be required,” Draghi was to tell EU leaders according to an EU source with insight into the meeting. Draghi told the 27 heads of state and government that monetary policy took the most of the burden over the last 8 years and noted that fiscal policy this year and next year would be mildly expansionary.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration issued an emergency order prohibiting U.S. operators from flying in an overwater area of Tehran-controlled airspace over the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman due to heightened tensions. The order came hours after United Airlines suspended flights between New Jersey's Newark airport and the Indian financial capital of Mumbai, which fly through Iranian airspace, following a safety review after Iran shot down a high-altitude U.S. surveillance drone. The downing of the unarmed Global Hawk aircraft, which can fly at up to 18,300 m, was the latest of a series of incidents in the Gulf region, a critical artery for global oil supplies, that included explosive strikes on six oil tankers. FAA said according to flight tracking applications, the nearest civil aircraft was operating within around 45 nautical miles of a U.S. Global Hawk drone when it was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile. "There were numerous civil aviation aircraft operating in the area at the time of the intercept," FAA said.

Japan’s core consumer inflation slowed in May and factory activity shrank in June, underlining the growing stress on the economy and keeping the central bank under pressure to expand its radical stimulus program, possibly as early as next month. The soft batch of data highlight the challenge the Bank of Japan faces in spurring inflation towards its 2% target, as trade frictions and slowing global growth threaten to derail the country’s economic recovery. The core consumer price index, which includes oil products but excludes volatile fresh food costs, rose 0.8% in May from a year earlier, government data showed on Friday, matching a median market forecast and slowing from a 0.9% gain in April. A separate private survey on Friday showed manufacturing activity contracted again in June as new orders fell at the fastest pace in three years, a sign slowing Chinese demand was taking a toll on Japan’s export-reliant economy. The BOJ kept monetary policy steady on Thursday but signaled its readiness to ramp up stimulus, joining central banks across the world that are shifting towards more easing as the escalating U.S.-China trade war raises fears of a global recession.