Bulgaria's consumer prices rose by 2.3% year-on-year in September, after increasing by 2.9% in August, the National Statistical Institute (NSI) said. On a monthly comparison basis, consumer prices edged down 0.3% in September, after adding 0.1% in August. Prices of food and non-alcoholic beverages, which have the largest weight in the consumer basket, increased 4.2% year-on-year in the ninth month of 2019, while prices of housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels rose 3.8%. Prices in the transport segment decreased by 2.8% on the year. Bulgaria’s EU-harmonised consumer price index (HICP) added 1.6% on the year in September and edged down 1.2% compared to August.

The minimum wage will be raised by BGN 50 from January 1, 2020. Thus, it would become BGN 610 from the cyrrent BGN 560, announced the Minister of Labor and Social Policy Biser Petkov. According to him, there is an increase of salaries in the budget sphere by 10%. Petkov confirmed that pensioners will also receive an increase in their salary. All pensions will be increased by 6.6% from July 2020. The increase is foreseen in the draft Law on the State Social Security Budget, the social minister specified. With this update, the average pension will increase by more than BGN 30 and will already be BGN 412, compared to BGN 381 this year. Pensions are being updated with a percentage that comes as a sum of half of the increase in the average social security income and half of the consumer price index, Biser Petkov explained.

Bulgaria-based life insurance companies increased their gross written premiums by an annual 17.6% to BGN 346.7 million in the first eight months of 2019, according to data from the Financial Supervision Commission. The rise was mostly driven by sickness insurance premiums, which more than doubled to BGN 77.3 million in the January-August period of 2019 from BGN 37.6 million in the comparable period of 2018, financial regulator data, showed. The four biggest life insurers had a combined market share of 86.9% of the total market. Bulstrad Life Vienna Insurance Group was the biggest player on the life insurance market with gross premiums of BGN 108.4 million in the first eight months of the year, equal to a market share of 31.3%. DZI Life Insurance and Allianz Bulgaria Life followed with market shares of 22.3% and 18.2%, respectively. The other company with a market share of over 10% was UNIQA Life, which recorded a market share of 15.1%.

The Taylor & Hart company, which aims to fully digitalise the ordering and delivery of engagement rings, has received funding of just over GBP 3.6 million. Although it operates mainly on the English market, the company has a Bulgarian co-founder and with a share of the fresh capital aims to double its team in Sofia. The company closes the investment round in August, and the fundraising start begins at the end of 2018. One of the main investors in the new round is the Bulgarian fund LAUNCHub Venture, which is financing Taylor & Hart for the second time. The amount of GBP 3.6 million is equivalent to 35% of the company distributed between all participants in the round. Part of the raised funds will be invested in expanding the marketing and technical team in Bulgaria, which currently consists of 12 people, or nearly half of Taylor & Hart's employees. Taylor & Hart's revenue last year was over GBP 3.1 million. In September 2018, Taylor & Hart received an investment of GBP 2 million from Garage Soho and popular advertiser John Hagarty. Earlier, Techstars and Seedrs were investing in Taylor & Hart.

Former head of the Bulgarian Energy Holding (BEH) Petio Ivanov found himself in a conflict of interest. The reason is that he combined this post with his participation on the board of directors of Bulgargaz. This was made clear by a decision of the Anti Committee for Combating Corruption and the Withdrawal of Illegally Acquired Property (KPKONPI). As director of the holding Iliev voted for himself during his appointment at Bulgargaz and determined his salary. Therefore, he was fined BGN 15,000 and ordered to forfeit the received remuneration of BGN 60,000. Other former and current managers of BEH, such as Jacquelin Cohen, Zhivko Dinchev and Andon Andonov, are in a similar situation, but there are no known decisions made about conflicts of interest. Cohen, in addition to the director of the holding, is also a member of the Board of Directors of Kozloduy NPP. Dinchev is the executive director of TPP Maritza-East 2 and Andonov directs Mini Maritsa Iztok.

Wastewater treatment plant was built in Vidin. The investment is estimated at BGN 20 million. It was built under the Operational Program "Environment" with grants from the Cohesion Fund of the European Union and the state budget, and BGN 580 thousand is own financing of the municipality. It is a continuation of all investments in the plumbing sector in recent years. The treatment plant is a stage of the water cycle of the city, during which the rehabilitation of the water supply and sewerage system was also carried out. The total value of the two projects is BGN 70 million.

Bulgarian gas supplier Overgas is planning to invest over BGN 79 million in the construction of some 398 kilometres of gas distribution pipelines over the period 2020-2024. The new infrastructure will help the company to roughly double the number of its clients to 129,000. The company's business plan for the regulatory period 2020-2024 has been submitted for approval by Bulgaria's energy regulator, the company noted. Overgas will also seek an increase in the state regulated gas prices in the review period. Overgas has invested over EUR 340 million in gas infrastructure to date.

Britain and the European Union said that divorce talks were making slow progress, as the U.K. government tried to look beyond Brexit with a wide-ranging policy platform read by Queen Elizabeth II in a pomp-filled ceremony. In terms of historical importance, the painstaking paragraph-by-paragraph talks at the EU’s glass-and-steel Berlaymont headquarters outweighed the regal ritual in which an ermine-draped monarch delivered a speech on the priorities of a Conservative government that could be out of office within weeks. But the spectacle, complete with horse-drawn coaches, lords in scarlet robes and a diamond-studded crown, did provide a diversion from the long Brexit grind. Britain is scheduled to leave the EU on Oct. 31, and an EU summit on Thursday or Friday is considered one of the last possible chances to approve a divorce agreement to accommodate that timeframe. Prime Minister Boris Johnson insists the country will leave at the end of the month with or without a deal.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) formally authorized the United States to impose tariffs on up to $7.5 billion of imports of EU goods after an arbitrator’s decision over subsidies to planemaker Airbus. The WTO’s dispute settlement body, made up of representatives from its 164 members, cleared Washington to take countermeasures against the European Union and Airbus-producing countries Britain, France, Germany and Spain. The authorization was a formality after a WTO arbitrator awarded a record right to retaliate over illegal subsidies this month. It would only have been denied if all WTO members present voted against. The meeting lasted less than 20 minutes. U.S. trade ambassador Dennis Shea told the meeting that Washington still preferred a negotiated solution. “But that can only happen if the EU genuinely terminates the benefits to Airbus from current subsidies and ensures that subsidies to Airbus cannot be revived under another name or another mechanism,” he told the meeting. The EU delegation told the meeting that it had “serious concerns” and that U.S. tariff measures were short-sighted.

China's foreign trade maintained stable growth in the first three quarters of this year by expanding 2.8 percent year on year, the General Administration of Customs (GAC) said. Total foreign trade volume reached 22.91 trillion yuan (about 3.23 trillion U.S. dollars) in the first 9 months. Exports expanded 5.2 percent while imports dropped 0.1 percent, GAC data showed. China saw its trade surplus widen by 44.2 percent year on year to 2.05 trillion yuan during this period. The country's trade mix continued to improve during this period with the general trade growing both in volume and proportion. General trade grew 4.8 percent year-on-year and accounted for 59.5 percent of the total trade, 1.1 percentage points higher over one year ago. Private firms made 9.69 trillion yuan of trade in the first 9 months, up 10.4 percent year on year and accounting for 42.3 percent of the country's total foreign trade. Trade in the country's central and western regions outpaced the national average, GAC data showed. Twelve western provincial regions and six central provinces saw their trade grow 11.8 percent and 12.4 percent respectively during the Jan.-Sept. period. China's foreign trade was generally stable with steady improvement, said GAC spokesperson Li Kuiwen.