site.btaDynamic Sectors of Bulgarian Economy Expected to Benefit from TTIP

Dynamic Sectors of Bulgarian Economy Expected to Benefitfrom TTIP

Sofia, April 28 (BTA) - The proposed Transatlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the European Union and the
 United States will benefit the more dynamic sectors of the
Bulgarian economy and those which already have a foothold on the
 US market, Institute for Market Economics (IME) Chief Economist
 Dessislava Nikolova said in a videotaped BTA interview on
Tuesday.

These sectors include computer software development and various
outsourced services which have been experiencing a major upturn
in recent years, Nikolova said. TTIP will have a positive impact
 on Bulgaria's machine-building, electronic and electrical
engineering industries which currently dominate Bulgarian
exports to the US, she predicted.

She expects the TTIP talks to continue for another two or three
years at least.

If customs duties are abolished as part of the future
arrangement, this will have a direct positive influence on half
of Bulgaria's exports to the US (which currently total 400
million dollars annually) and on 40 per cent of US imports to
Bulgaria, Nikolova said. Although US imports to Bulgaria have
grown rapidly over the last two years, Bulgaria still enjoys a
50 per cent surplus in bilateral trade, she said.

The free trade arrangement will have an indirect impact on
investment, too. The US is the ninth-largest foreign investor in
 the Bulgarian economy, with 1.5 billion euro in gross
investments made since 1996, Nikolova said.

At a BTA-hosted news conference earlier in the day, IME Senior
Economist Peter Ganev said that the notion that a small economy
is bound to suffer from a free trade relationship with large and
 more competitive economies has been shown to be absurd. Ganev
noted that the relatively small economy of Bulgaria joined the
huge EU market in 2007, and now Bulgarians live better than
before. In a bloc in which other economies are more competitive
than the Bulgarian economy, Bulgarian exports to the rest of the
 EU have doubled or even tripled despite the economic crisis, he
 said. In particular, exports to Germany have doubled, he added.

The controversial issue of shale gas development will not be
influenced by TTIP because this is a matter of national policy.
Whether or not there is a moratorium on shale gas development in
 Bulgaria (which is now a fact) is entirely up to the Bulgarian
Parliament, Ganev reasoned.

He said it is a lie that TTIP will deprive people of their
employment rights. TTIP has no chapter on labour, he said.

Ganev sees TTIP as an opportunity for Bulgarian products to get
to foreign markets even more easily than now.