site.btaEconomy Ministry Prioritizes Eased Recruitment of Labour from Third Countries

During the term in office of the caretaker Cabinet, the Ministry of Economy and Industry will focus on key priorities including Bulgaria's accession to the eurozone, the Schengen area and the OECD, simplifying and speeding up the recruitment of skilled labour from third countries, easing the regulatory burden, and coordinating the SMEs Strategy.

Deputy Minister Nikolay Pavlov presented these priorities to the National Council of the Bulgarian Industrial Capital Association (BICA), Pavlov's Ministry said in a press release on Sunday.

"The economic situation in Europe and in Bulgaria is bad. Europe is being deindustrialized at a very fast pace. Last year the European economy grew just 0.4%, and this year's growth is again projected at less than 1%. There are numerous reasons for this, but the main ones are the Green Deal, expensive energy, overregulation and scarcity of human resources in therms of quantity, quality, education and motivation," BICA Governing Board Chair Vasil Velev said, expressing the hope that his organization and the Economy Ministry can work together for an improvement of the business environment and the competitiveness of Bulgarian companies.

Pavlov was adamant that the problems of the largest European economies: Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Austria, inevitably affect Bulgaria. He singled out as a major task of his Ministry to work jointly with the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy for an acceleration of the processes of attracting and retaining skilled labour from third countries while continuing to train and reskill the labour force available at home. 

In the Deputy Minister's words, the first steps that must be taken in this direction is to identify the labour force profiles in demand and to earmark markets to be targeted for their attraction. "Such legislative steps were recently made for the tourism industry staff," he added.

"The idea is to ease this whole lengthy process. The Ministry will seek to solicit the Trade and Economic Affairs Offices in the countries earmarked as potential markets so as to assist the Bulgarian embassies and consulates and provide information on the human resources and process the documents until these people gain access to the Bulgarian labour market," Pavlov said further.