Ryanair, the world’s favourite airline, today (4 August) announced that it will open a new twice-weekly service from London Stansted to Plovdiv in Bulgaria which will commence on 2 November with fares from £32.99 one way inclusive of taxes.

Ryanair celebrated this new routes by releasing 500,000 £8 seats for travel on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays in September. These “all in” low fares will be available on over 500 of Ryanair’s European routes but must be booked on www.ryanair.com before midnight on Thursday, 5 Aug.

Ryanair’s Laura McCormack said:

“Ryanair is delighted to announce our first Bulgarian route from London Stansted to Plovdiv. This new service will operate twice-weekly on Tuesdays and Saturdays with fares from only £32.99 one way inclusive of taxes which will go on sale tomorrow on www.ryanair.com. Plovdiv is Bulgaria’s second largest city with a rich and varied history dating back 8000 years. Plovdiv makes a great city break destination and is also within easy access of the ski resorts of Bansko and

Only Ryanair sells Europe’s lowest fares with a no fuel surcharge guarantee. In addition to our lowest fares we also deliver Europe’s No1 on-time performance across over 1,100 routes. Passengers can book our £8 seats for travel on over 500 European destinations in September. These seats can only be booked until midnight on Thursday (5 August) and are sure to be snapped up fast so we urge passengers to book them on www.ryanair.com before they sell out. Fares to Plovdiv start from £32.99 one way inclusive of taxes.”

Mortgage loans for foreign nationals and Bulgarians working abroad are back on the Bulgarian banking market in response to reviving demand, banks and credit consultants said.

Tihomir Toshev, executive director of credit consultant Credit Center, said interest in this type of loans was zero at the time when the crisis was at its worst, forcing lenders to withdraw such offers.

Other consultants say that banks are imposing new requirements, such as targeting borrowers from specific nationalities and financing the purchases of a property whose construction the lender has backed.

UniCredit Bulbank said on July 13 2010 that it had launched mortgages for foreigners and Bulgarians working abroad, who could choose from among a list of 22 projects financed by the bank.

Source: Dnevnik.bg

Despite flying “in bulk” to more than 150 destinations throughout Europe, low-cost airline Ryanair is very picky in choosing which airports it uses. Among the list of conditions that must be met, the most important is that the use of the airport must come cheaply.

This is one of the main reasons why the largest no-frills airline in the world is yet to launch flights to Bulgaria. But all of that could change now that several municipalities in Plovdiv region – Hissarya, Assenovgrad and Rodopi – have joined forces to draw more tourists by exploiting the proximity of Plovdiv Airport.

In 2009, the Bulgarian Government completed work on a large passenger terminal in the country’s second-largest city, investing more than 40 million leva in the construction, which for now stands empty.

Until April, the only regular arrivals to Plovdiv were by Russian airline S7 out of Siberia, which will resume flights in September.

Cargo flights are out of the question because Plovdiv Airport has no cargo terminal, so the only option is to attract passenger flights by low-cost airlines, since the traditional carriers operate flights to the not-so-distant Sofia.

To draw the interest of big-name players like Ryanair, the Cabinet halved the fees for Plovdiv Airport starting May 1 until May 1 2012. The airport fee is thus half that charged by Sofia Airport and and the passenger processing fee is three times lower.

There is still no contract with the Irish low-cost carrier, but people familiar with the situation say that there is an unspoken competition to win Ryanair’s business. On May 26, the airline’s officials met representatives of all civilian airports in Bulgaria and a technical review of the Plovdiv Airport is said to have been scheduled.

ECCENTRIC: Chief executive of Ryanair Michael O’Leary poses for photographers during a news conference in Vienna in November 2007.

I want to fly

The three municipalities set up on May 20 a fund for the development of Plovdiv Airport.

“The goal of this non-profit organisation is to raise funds and help the creation of permanent flights to Plovdiv Airport, as well as advertise the municipalities,” the executive director of Plovdiv Airport Doichin Angelov said.

Plovdiv city hall is expected to join the initiative and 20 more municipalities are in talks to do the same. The fund’s decisions are taken by majority vote of its board, which includes all mayors, while Plovdiv Airport has been retained as a consultant.

The money would be raised from tourist taxes, which hotels have to pay to local authorities. Additionally, a small local tax would be levied on residents of municipalities that have joined the fund. For the three municipalities now on board, that would generate an estimated 56 000 leva a year.

“It is an opportunity for joint action if any given municipality cannot manage on its own,” the governor of Plovdiv region, Ivan Totev, said. “The fund is a mechanism to share risk, a practice common in the West, but not used a lot in Bulgaria,” he said.

The example that the local authorities in Plovdiv hope to emulate is that of Girona Airport in Catalonia, about 92km from Barcelona, which Ryanair picked as one of its destinations in 2000.

“After the creation of a similar fund by Catalonian municipalities, an airport that had no passengers managed to build a passenger flow of eight million people,” Totev said. “Such a practice can be used in other fields, Plovdiv Airport is just one separate case.”

The first step is to help attract airlines to use Plovdiv Airport, which is now underused, followed by the establishment of regular bus lines between individual municipalities and the airport.

After the local authorities announced their plans, the immediate follow-up question was whether the money would be treated as state aid. The fears are that the airline could be compensated under certain conditions, such as flights not being sold out.

“There can be no talk of state aid because the fund was not set up to help a particular airline,” Totev said.

The proposed solution is that airlines would sign separate contracts with Plovdiv Airport and the fund, the second one being optional and carrying certain obligations for both sides. “The airlines would be paid by the fund in return for advertising space on their websites, promoting [Bulgarian] municipalities and their tourist attractions,” Angelov said.

Like many other low-cost airlines, Ryanair flies mainly to regional or secondary airports that charge lower fees. Sometimes, these airports happen to be even closer to the central city areas than the main airports, as is the case with Belfast, Gothenburg and Rome.

Cheaper is better

Ryanair has the reputation of unscrupulously pursuing its agenda in all negotiations with airports, with the end goal being lower costs. It is no wonder that its chief executive Michael O’Leary is one of the least liked in the industry.

In the past, the airline has employed such tactics as pitting nearby airports against each other for its business and arm-twisting airports into agreeing to its terms. In April 2006, Ryanair surprised the management of Cardiff Airport by announcing an end to flights to Dublin. More recently, the airline said it would cease operations in Budapest and Prague starting with October 2010 because of the high fees.

This constant drive to minimise airport and ground personnel costs is the main reason for Ryanair’s ability to offer cheaper prices to its customers. As an example, by booking two months in advance, flying from London to Madrid would cost 35 euro with Ryanair, compared to about 150 euro using British Airways or Iberia.

The service offered for the lower price is also different – Ryanair passengers end up paying for extras like food, seat preference and luggage, as do customers of other low-cost airlines like easyJet and Wizz Air.

It is still unclear what destinations Ryanair would pick in Bulgaria and where those flights would be headed. But according to an Economy Ministry source, the expectation is that Plovdiv would be linked to five destinations and flights could be launched as early as September.

Kapital weekly, issue 22

About 600 British property owners have not paid their estate taxes in the Bulgarian resort town of Pamporovo for the past two years, Bulgarian news agency BTA said on July 1 2010.

According to Chepelare deputy mayor Georgi Pepelanov, the municipality has sent nearly 600 letters to debtors, addressed to the UK, in which the owners concerned are “kindly requested” to pay their taxes.

The municipality’s mailings cost 600 leva, as each letter costs about one lev, the report said.

Perhaps to defuse tension, Pepelanov said that the municipality is certain that this was not a deliberate evasion but merely a misunderstanding between the British owners and the companies managing their properties in Bulgaria.

However, the municipality is also owed a large sum from local hotels in the resort of Pamporovo.

According to the BTA, the sum owed by the British and the hotels amounts to 600 000 leva in total.

“Russians and Spanish nationals also have property here but they have paid taxes on time,” Pepelanov said.

So far, the municipality has only received about a third of the money owed to it by hotels in Pamporovo.

The Sofia Echo

One of Europe’s largest low-cost airlines, Ryanair, plans to start flying to and from Bulgaria’s second largest city of Plovdiv in September 2010, Bulgaria’s Deputy Economy and Tourism Minister Ivo Marinov was quoted as saying by Bulgarian-language media.

But to launch flights to Bulgaria, Ryanair asked for lower landing fees charged by the country’s airports, Marinov said during a discussion in Parliament on the topic of Bulgarian tourism. It was a demand that the Cabinet was now considering for the less-used Plovdiv airport, at least for a period of two years.

Plovdiv would be Ryanair’s first destination in Bulgaria.

Bulgarian-language Dnevnik daily also quoted Ivelina Grozdeva of the Bulgarian Hotel and Restaurant Association as saying that Ryanair should be allowed to also operate flights to Sofia, Bourgas and Varna.

The Sofia Echo

Bulgarian PM Borisov (standing) and Finance Minister Djankov during Friday's news conference during which they made staggering revelations that the country's budget deficit doubled in 2009. Photo by BGNES

Bulgaria’s 2009 budget deficit has doubled as a result of “hidden” contracts made by the Stanishev Cabinet, the Borisov government has announced.

Finance Minister Simeon Djankov stated that the state budgets for 2008 and 2009 will have to be revised and recalculated because of the contracts in question made by the previous government that the Ministers of Boyko Borisov were not made aware of when they took over in July 2009.

“We are going to revise voluntarily the budgets for 2008 and 2009, according to our best estimates at the current moment – unless there are more surprises, of course, that might be hidden somewhere else in the drawers of the various ministries. Thus, with the hidden contracts of the previous government that have recently emerged, our 2009 budget deficit almost doubles – from 1,9% to 3,7%,” Djankov declared at a joint news conference together with Prime Minister Boyko Borisov and Economy Minister Traicho Traikov.

Djankov emphasized the fact with the emergence of the “surprising” new deficit, Bulgaria no longer meets the Eurozone criteria as its budget deficit is over 3%.

Djankov and Borisov revealed that they had notified the EU institutions about the 2009 “hyper deficit”, as they call it, on Thursday afternoon.

“Unwillingly, our government has become part of the lies that our predecessors had been telling the EU institutions in Brussels. We have even lied involuntarily when we applied to the ERM II as well. We were telling the Eurozone we are ready without knowing that the previous government had laid this trap for us,” PM Borisov said.

“This doubling of the 2009 budget deficit means at least two things. First, it is very likely that now that our European partners know about these results, Bulgaria may face infringement procedures because it actually had a hyper-deficit in 2009. Every single time that the Bulgarian Socialist Party has been in power, Bulgaria has gotten into financial trouble. This happened after the Lukanov government, after the Videnov government, and now after the government of Sergey Stanishev,” Finance Minister Djankov stated.

He emphasized that the sanctions that Bulgaria might have to face on part of Brussels most likely would entail regular monitoring of the country’s finances, and respective reports every six months, which means that Bulgaria will not be able to apply to join the ERM II in 2010 as Djankov originally planned.

The Finance Minister pointed out that because of the unforeseen expenses the government will have to make under the “hidden” public procurement contracts, it will have to revise the adopted anti-crisis package of 60 measures by cutting state spending even further.

Sofia News Agency (novinite.com)

Bulgaria's center-right government has blamed their Socialist predecessors for the dashed hopes for entry into ERM II in 2010. Photo by BGNES

Bulgaria’s center-right government abandoned plans on Friday to apply to join the bloc’s exchange-rate mechanism, the so-called Eurozone waiting room, over a larger than expected 2009 deficit caused by unaccounted procurement deals, signed by the previous Socialist-led cabinet.

“It would be insolent to apply for ERM II and the eurozone given the high levels of the deficit”, Prime Minister Boyko Borisov told a news conference. “We have in fact lied to our (EU) colleagues about our readiness for the euro zone being unaware of this trap.”

Bulgaria’s Finance Minister Simeon Djankov told the same press conference that the country’s aspirations to join ERM II will not be rewarded this year.

“Bulgaria’s hidden budget deficit has ruined its dreams of joining the eurozone due to financially unaccounted procurement deals, which increased the 2009 gap to 3.7% of gross domestic product (GDP) from an initial 1.9%,” Minister Djankov said.

He announced that the budgets for 2008 and 2009 will be revised after annexes to a total of 150 contracts incurred losses to the budget worth BGN 2,15 M.

“We were expected to be a fiscal model for the other European countries together with Estonia, now I will feel only shame in Madrid ( at the meeting of the EU finance ministers next week) when I tell my colleagues what has happened,” Djankov fumed.

“Europe does not make a distinction between current and former governments. I represent Bulgaria and now it is a shame,” he added.

The finance minister stressed that the revision of the budgets from the last two years will not reflect on the budget for 2010 and the government will do its best to keep the budget deficit under 3% in line with the Maastricht criteria.

“This year, there is no risk for the fiscal stability, the currency board and the banking system thanks to our tight fiscal policy,” Djankov said.

Joining the exchange-rate mechanism was assigned top priority for this year by the new Bulgarian center-right government, which was the reason why it stuck to tight financial policy at the end of 2009 and delayed payments to businesses in a bid to keep low the budget deficit.

Minister Djankov, a World Bank economist, hoped to offset a possible reluctance to admit Bulgaria into the ERM, stemming from the global crisis, by garnishing the application with a targeted balanced 2010 budget, small 2009 deficit and laws overhauling the inefficient health-care and social-security systems.

Entry into the so-called Eurozone waiting room would have brought Bulgaria closer to the umbrella of the euro region and the protection of the European Central Bank and was conditional on whether the new government would succeed to restore Brussels trust and the budget deficit that the country has posted.

Countries must be members of ERM II for two years before they can formally join the eurozone.

Bulgaria so far believed that it could be ready for euro entry by 2013.

Sofia News Agency (novinite.com)

The Ryanair delegation is expected to arrive in Bulgaria on April 6 and will remain in the country until April 15.

“They will meet with the Transport Minister Alexander Tsvetkov and subsequently will travel to Plovdiv, where we are to finalise our potential agreement with them,” Angelov said in the statement.

Ryanair has been showing interest in Bulgaria for several years. But as airport taxes are poised to become three times cheaper than those at Sofia as of April 1, the reality for the line to be launched becomes ever more real.

A forum between the Plovdiv municipal administration and the Bulgarian-Catalan chamber of commerce BGCAT was held in Plovdiv on March 23.

Meanwhile, Sofia Airport said that Danish budget carrier Cimber Sterling will link Copenhagen and Sofia and flights will be conducted biweekly, on Thursdays and Sundays, Dnevnik reported. Currently there is no direct flight to the Danish capital. The flights will start on March 28.

Bulgaria Air used to fly Copenhagen, but the service was withdrawn in 2006.

The newest attraction at the resort is floodlights installed at the Snejanka 3 slope as well as the Stanata (The Wall), Pamporovo’s most demanding slope. The media statement also says the complex is equipped with a new dental and first aid medical centre, Medicus Alfa, which will operate 24-hours.

The resort currently has more than 19km of slopes, 95 per cent of which can be serviced by snow cannons if needed. A brand new six-seater lift has also been installed as well as a recreational park and an “extreme park” all within the premises.

Finally, the report’s authorities believe that with the inauguration of the new border crossing point between Bulgaria and Greece at Zlatograd, many people in northern Greece will visit the resort, thus boosting the local economy.

Greek tour operators have been invited to attend the official inauguration ceremony on December 19. Tourists are also expected to flock from Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro after the visa regime for the aforementioned countries is officially dropped the same day.

The carrier is S7 Airlines, described in a report by Bulgarian news agency Focus as the second-largest airline in Russia after Aeroflot.

Flights will be once-weekly on Fridays.

The airline has several connecting flights to destinations in the Middle East, which could boost passenger flow to Plovdiv, Focus said.

An upgrade of Plovdiv Airport was completed in 2009 after an investment of about 40 million leva, but more funds will be required to revamp the airport completely.

The airport, frequently used by tourists headed for Pamporovo and other Rhodope destinations, is said to service about two million passengers a year.

The Greek farmers strike was scheduled to start at 11am on January 18 and the farmers duly sealed off the border, but only for lorries. According to Greek authorities, lorries queuing on the border would be allowed to trickle through between 3pm until 5pm. However, vehicles ferrying timber and dairy products would not be allowed to pass, Dnevnik said.

For the time being, the other three border crossing points between Bulgaria and Greece were operating normally, although it was uncertain for how long.

Bulgaria’s Interior Ministry and border police have warned Bulgarians not to travel to Greece unless “absolutely necessary”. Authorities say that any trips to Greece while the blockade is enforced are likely to result in “serious delays, traffic jams and substantial financial losses”.

Greek daily Kathimerini said that more farmers from Serres were expected to descend on the Promachonas crossing on the border with Bulgaria from January 18, and that wider protests could follow in coming days as farmers stepped up their demands. The blockades are expected to last at least five days.

We were having lunch a short falling distance from the beginner’s slopes in Pamporovo, while her husband and my wife were off further up Snezhanka peak, skiing on slopes appropriate to their respective degrees of skill.

The Irish couple was from a town just south of the Northern Irish border. For her husband, it was the latest of many visits he had made in the past 20 years. It was her fourth, and she and two of her small children were sharing a novice skiing class with me. She laughingly confessed it was not the first time that she was trying to learn to ski. This time was to prove no success either. She and the children did not turn up after lunch on day two, and after that I found myself by default in an individual class. Not a bad thing, although she and the little children had made good company for me; but we Africans need special attention in skiing classes, because we are just not used to this crunchy white stuff called snow.

Back to lunch, and back to the Irish. Of her husband, the tourist told me: “he just loves Bulgaria. And so do I”.

There were many accents like hers to be heard in Pamporovo in that week, cheering each other on down the slopes, keeping the bar people busy, and occasionally braving an attempt to haggle with Pamporovo’s taxi drivers.

All this past year I had followed with great interest the unfolding saga of Bulgaria’s tourist industry. The Sofia Echo takes the subject sufficiently seriously that we run a column on it every week. Of course, few Bulgarian newspapers of note had failed to record the reports published in foreign countries about tourism in Bulgaria.

Conventional wisdom has come down to a number of points. One is that Bulgaria’s tourism industry is ever-growing. Another is that a threat to it is that the country will not remain affordable, and related to this point is that the country will have to do a lot more than simply sell itself on the basis of being cheaper than other destinations. A further, and much-reported, issue has been that of “construction tourism” at seaside and winter resorts, with construction continuing during the respective high seasons, and alienating visitors.

Well yes, I had seen media reports of some controversy about construction continuing at Pamporovo, although during our daily commuting between our hotel and the slopes, I saw no evidence of it. Yes, Pamporovo is less “affordable” than it was when we first visited together four years ago.

Time for a few realities. The Irish tourist couple did not regard cost as any kind of factor. Before you rush to say that spending leva means nothing to wealthy Europeans, this is a couple composed of a husband who is a teacher, and a wife who broke off her career eight years ago to produce their three children – the youngest just 11 months ago.

What was it this couple enthused about? The atmosphere. The people – Bulgarians, themselves. As the tourist put it to me, “the hospitality, the warmth, the ability to have a good time, to put themselves out for us”.

I wish all the skeptics could have heard this conversation, including those who say that Bulgarians have learnt nothing about the service ethic.

Listening to her, I responded that the night before our conversation, I had seen BNT’s programme Dalekogled, which had featured an Irish expatriate saying that he had felt very much at home in the past four years here because, he believed, the Irish and Bulgarians had very much in common, at the level of the soul and in approach to life.

She agreed, and said she believed that was one of the reasons her husband had come back so often.

When I met him, I said to her husband that I was very glad to meet a “return tourist” because of concerns that people would come to the country only once, tick it off their list – or go home with bad word of mouth because of “construction tourism” or bad service – and never come back.

He laughed, his face red with the exertion of the slopes, and said he hoped to come back many, many times.

His wife did not feel in the least deprived by her continuing inadequacy at learning to ski.
“The apres-ski is the best thing, after all, isn’t it?”

The attractions of Pamporovo’s bars and restaurants were, it seems, one of the reasons that she and some of the other tourists removed themselves from the slopes at one stage or another. “Bulgarian wine is very good, but it goes down rather too easily. So I’m feeling a bit pale today. Still, I wish it were easier to get it in Ireland. The stuff they export really isn’t the best”.

I smiled when she asked me whether or not the country was in the European Union. Living every day with coverage of the issue of whether or not Bulgaria will deal adequately with major issues like judiciary reform and thus meet its January 2007 appointment, I found it refreshing to meet someone to whom it was not a real issue, and who had half an impression that Bulgaria already had achieved this Holy Grail of European respectability.

All around me foreign tourists, including one Western diplomat and his wife who were happily incognito, were having a good time, and it is correct to record my own impressions, those of someone who is now in his fourth year of living in Bulgaria. In a word: good. Rental of ski equipment, and the lessons, were not cheap but nor were they exorbitant. Service everywhere was decent. With the exception of New Year’s Day, machines cleaned the roads to keep them safe. There was much more signage in English (and in better English) than during my first visit four years ago.

And if I sound in a good mood, it is not that the people of Pamporovo slipped me a few leva to write something nice about them. It is because, with the very patient teaching and encouragement of a young lady called Biserka, and with a tumble or four, and a few stops to catch my breath, on New Year’s Day, I somehow made it down the green slope of Snezhanka. For a middle-aged African, that’s not bad, don’t you think? It’s enough to make me want to go back.

All Bulgarian – Greek border checkpoints, including the newly opened Zlatograd-Xanthi checkpoint, were operating normally on January 16, media reports said, after the previous day the Ilinden – Eksohi checkpoint was blockaded for 90 minutes.

People should avoid travelling to Greece, Bulgarian news agency Focus quoted deputy regional governor of Blagoevgrad Georgi Bahanov as saying after the meeting at Kulata border checkpoint with his counterpart deputy regional governor of Serres, Tomas Syambris, and a representative of the police Nikolas Rizos.

The Greek side offered an alternative route for drivers through Zlatarevo border checkpoint, Valandovo and Gevgeli.

Farmers have said that they would continue the protest for a further five days from January 18, but this depends on the outcome of negotiations. The farmers want to be paid 2009 subsidies that are in arrears, and have indicated that the strike could become indefinite until this happens.

Bulgaria said that bodies including the border police, Bulgarian Red Cross, emergency services and local authorities had been briefed on steps to take in the event of a sustained blockade and were co-ordinating their actions.

Bulgarian National Television (BNT) said that the January 16 meeting between the deputy governors of Blagoevgrad and Serres was held to discuss how to deal with traffic flow in the event of a further blockade.

Bulgaria was requesting clear rules on how traffic flow would work, not only for light vehicles but also for TIR lorries, BNT said.

Greek daily Kathimerini said that wider protests could follow in the days ahead as farmers stepped up their demands.

On January 15, about 120 tractors were used to close the national road near the Strymonas bridge in northern Greece. Motorists had to use a diversion which took them onto the old Thessaloniki-Kavala highway via Asprovalta. The same day, farmers from Kastoria also set up intermittent blocks on the road leading to the Albanian border.

Kathimerini said that more farmers from Serres were expected to descend on the Promachonas crossing on the border with Bulgaria from January 18.

On January 16, before the meeting between the Blagoevgrad and Serres officials started, Focus quoted Todor Georgiev, head of the regional customs office in Smolyan, as saying that Bulgarian motorists should check the situation before travelling to Greece.

This could be done at the Interior Ministry website, and people should check news websites as well, Georgiev said.

Bulgarian citizens travelling to Turkey were advised to use the Lesovo and Malko Tarnovo border checkpoints.

The alternatives to the Kapitan Andreevo – Kalotina border checkpoints are the crossings along the Bulgarian-Serbian border: Vrashka Chuka, Bregovo, Stezimirovtsi and Oltomantsi or to Romania via the Danube Bridge and to Macedonia via Gyueshevo crossing, Focus said.

1. We will see reduced prices for ski passes and ski school.
2. The sloped have been better prepared for the ski season.
3. 118 snow cannons have been installed and commissioned, these snow cannons are York and of a very high standard. The snow canons will work at zero degrees or lower.
4. 5 grooming kits have been purchased, 1 new and 4 fully reconditioned, these machines will distribute the snow throughout the resort.
5. 50 new guns to shoot the snow have been purchased they are located on the mid station red run number 5 and red run number 2.
6. There are two new ski runs from Snejanka to Studenets and they are both intermediate runs.
7. A new kinder garden for children aged 4 plus with new facilities will be opened in the resort.

The statistics show that, on an annual basis the growth of buildings completed accounts for 6.9%, while the increase of new apartments has grown by +30.2%. For the period May to July 2009, 679 properties were erected with 5,888 flats in total. For that period alone, there is a +51.1% increase in new apartments nationwide.

Varna led the way with 157 new buildings constructed, with a total of 1,204 new units, followed by Bourgas who had 134 buildings recently constructed making a total of 1,665 new units and Sofia with 35 new buildings recently constructed as well as 549 new apartments. The report indicated that there was no new construction in the towns of Razgrad, Montana and Haskovo in the same period.

The figures indicate that the total new marketable area consists of more than 411,000sqm of apartment space, or a +15.9% increase compared to the corresponding period for 2008. However, according to the report, on average, flats are becoming smaller. In the second quarter of 2009, the average living area in new construction amounted to 75.5sqm, which in the third quarter decreased to 69.9sqm.

If you’re intending to buy a home in Bulgaria, you can go for a Bulgarian mortgage loan. However, you should assess your financial capacity before starting off. How much house can I afford is a familiar query that comes up in the mind of every home buyer. Use a home affordability calculator to find this out. The Bulgarian property sector is showing signs of gradual development.

Try to get a comprehensive idea about your repayment capacity prior to going for a mortgage loan in Bulgaria. This is important irrespective of the fact whether you’re a first time homebuyer or refinancing your existing mortgage. Various online mortgage calculators are available that can help you decide how much mortgage you should borrow and which loan term is most convenient for you.

For purchasing a home in Bulgaria, there are some important types of calculators that you can use such as maximum borrowing calculator, stamp duty calculator, loan to value (LTV) calculator and deposit calculator.

There are a number of mortgage lenders in Bulgaria that offer an all-inclusive range of loan products for people who are keen to buy a home in Bulgaria. Presently, the terms and conditions of mortgage lending in Bulgaria have been made somewhat stringent. For this reason, you might face some difficulties while shopping around for a mortgage loan in Bulgaria.

You have to furnish details of your income when you’re going to apply for a mortgage in Bulgaria. The amount of your income should be double of what it was one year ago. For instance, if your income was 2,000 Euros last year, it must be 4,000 Euros now. This permits you to request for a mortgage.

Forecasts are being made that the number of borrowers searching for mortgages in Bulgaria would be growing in late 2009. The reason behind this is the slump in house prices would be pulling more and more consumers to get mortgage loans.

The Japanese Mitsubishi Corporation and the Bulgarian Dei Energy will build an EUR 200 M ecological energy park near the Northern Bulgarian city of Pleven. Photo by BGNES
The Japanese Mitsubishi Corporation and the Bulgarian Dei Energy will build an EUR 200 M ecological energy park near the Northern Bulgarian city of Pleven, the Pari Daily reported.

The park will be built on 1,800 dekares of abandoned land in the Gulyantsi Municipality, in the Pleven Region. There project will include both wind mills and photovoltaic panels with a total capacity of 160 MW. The construction is scheduled to begin in 2010, while the completion is planned for 2012. Many local contractors will be involved.

“Our research in the region shows that the wind mills will be able to operate nearly 2 000 hours a year, and the investment amount will be recovered in 8-10 years”, the Dei Energy CEO, Ivan Tihov, explained. The photovoltaic panels will be located on the Danube river’s shore, producing energy of 1,200-1,300 hours a year, he added.

Dei Energy has had similar projects near Bulgaria’s Sliven. The company will start another wind park there in the next few days. Its power will be 150 MW.

“We plan to build several renewable energy parks around Bulgaria with total a power of 500-600 MW”, Tihov said.

Balmoral Capital Holdings, financing arm of Balmoral Bulgaria SPV, an integrated solar power plant development company, has signed a 25-year agreement with Apex Solar to organize approvals for 18 photovoltaic power plants in Bulgaria, according to SolarBuzz.

The plants will range from 1MW to 5MW for a total of 144MW across the whole 18. Each plant designed will be organized by Apex Solar to be developed for panel delivery in early 2010.

“The organization and contract building now in PV power plants in Bulgaria is a major milestone for our Balmoral Companies as our subsidiary Balmoral Bulgaria,” said Rodney Kincaid, Managing Partner of Balmoral Capital and CEO of Balmoral Financial.

Kincaid added that the company is looking for competitive bids on high-performance PV panels, with the results of the winning bid given in the next 30 days. “There are so many high technically performing panels with great financial returns. It is hard to settle to one manufacturer,” he said.

In the future the company plans to build 130-144 PV plants in Bulgaria and move to other European markets by 2011. Various income funds are discussing buying the income streams from the projects.

Indian wind turbine manufacturer, Suzlon Energy Ltd, has entered into an agreement with Technomash to deliver six Suzlon S88 2.1 MW wind turbines to a wind farm in the Varna region in Bulgaria.

The world’s fifth and India’s largest wind turbine manufacturer, Suzlon Energy Ltd, will supply six of its S88 2.1 MW wind turbines to the Bulgarian industrial group, Technomash, during 2009 and 2010 for installation on a wind farm close to Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast.

“Bulgaria offers an excellent wind regime and supportive investment climate, and we aim to expand the wind market in the country,” said Erik Winther Pedersen, CEO of Suzlon Wind Energy.

“This is both an important order and important new market for Suzlon. Europe forms the largest market for wind energy, and we are focused on expanding our footprint in the market,” added Sumant Sinha, COO of Suzlon Energy Limited.

According to Suzlon, Bulgaria offers considerable potential for wind farm development, with around 3,400 MW of wind resource that can be developed in the mid-term. Furthermore, the Bulgarian government has announced a generous feed-in tariff for wind energy and has set a maximum of 11% of gross energy consumption to come from renewable energy sources by 2010.

For additional information:
Suzlon