site.btaMedia Review: January 19

ECONOMY

"Artificial Intelligence Used in Online Shopping Scams," runs the headline of the main story in 24 Chasa. The daily says that Bulgarian victims of cyberfraud lost over BGN 600,000 during the holiday season. Unlike before, there were only three victims. The large amount of money resulted from the draining of BGN 400,000 from a corporate bank account. In another case, the victim was a misled "lover" who was told that a foreigner was coming to Bulgaria to see them but first they needed to remit some money. Eventually, the Bulgarian lost BGN 200,000. During the holiday season online shopping scammers usually pick their targets on public notice websites or Facebook Marketplace. The biggest haul of the year was reported in July, at BGN 12 million.

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Economy and Industry Minister Bogdan Bogdanov says in an extensive interview with 24 Chasa that Bulgarian exports are turning eastward because it is about time that the country diversify its markets. After an initial analysis, the Economy Ministry is focusing on six primary markets in 2024, three of them in Asia (South Korea, Japan and Vietnam), two in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates), and one in North Africa (Egypt).

Bogdanov says: "We plan to boost the capacity of our commercial representations there, organize meetings at the government level and identify areas of cooperation," Bogdanov says. "Late last year a Bulgarian delegation travelled to Japan and South Korea, and now we plan visits to the Middle East in February. The goal is by the end of this year to establish what are known as intergovernmental commissions, which are the main platform for discussing strategic and economic priorities and providing possibilities to organize business forums."

Asked whether the State Consolidation Company (SCC) is to be restructured or closed, Bogdanov says the company's future is yet to be decided. "The first steps will be to guarantee the future of the constituent enterprises and to ensure that the people keep their jobs." The minister expects that a report on the SCC will be ready by the end of March. "The idea is that the process of restructuring should begin in March," he adds. He notes that the SCC case shows there is a way to protect the interests of the state.

Discussing the "Affordable for You" initiative, which aims to encourage major food chains to set price caps on basic food products, Bogdanov says the initiative may become one of the main instruments to foil profiteering attempts around the time that Bulgaria adopts the euro.

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MPs have warned of pitfalls in using EU aid for home retrofitting, Trud says in its main story. The problems are due to deficiencies in the relevant assessment methodology devised by the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works. To make sure they become entitled to receive EU money, many companies pledge to provide unrealistically high levels of energy efficiency of the buildings. If the European Commission detects malpractices, people will have to refund between 25% and 50% of the money invested in the retrofitting of their homes, Trud warns.

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Smaller revenues from own sources, less money from EU funds and a less ambitious investment programme, but a good BGN 100 million from the state budget earmarked for municipal projects (half of them in residential quarters) - this is a nutshell description of the draft 2024 budget of the Bulgarian capital Sofia, provided in a story on MediaPool.bg. The proposed budget, totalling BGN 2.58 billion, was unveiled on Thursday and will be put to public discussion on January 25.

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Floating solar power panels instead of coal-fired power plants, natural gas and hydrogen instead of polluting technologies, and energy storage batteries - these are some of the initiatives proposed by potential investors in future replacement industries in Bulgaria's three coal regions: Stara Zagora, Kyustendil and Pernik, the Capital weekly says. Some of the projects are worth as much as BGN 1 billion. Most of them are still at an initial stage and it is difficult to say whether and when they will be implemented.

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"The March of the Chinese Electric Vehicle Industry," runs the headline of the cover story in Capital. The weekly magazine says that China became the world's largest exporter of motor vehicles in 2023, when it exported 5.3 million units, surpassing Japan. Although most of these vehicles are driven by an internal combustion engine (mainly intended for such countries as Russia), electric vehicles hold an ever larger share. The growth of this segment of Chinese auto exports is particularly visible in Europe, where China holds more than 8% of the electric vehicle market.

The Chinese expansion is not discernible in Bulgaria for now, the magazine says. Only 30 out of 2,500 new electric vehicles sold in Bulgaria in 2023 were Chinese. Professionals expect that at least three Chinese manufacturers will expand into the Bulgarian market through local partners in 2024, offering both electric vehicles and vehicles with an internal combustion engine.

Capital also says that many Bulgarian suppliers working for international auto makers have switched to producing electric vehicle components.

POLITICS

Property deals involving ranking members of the power-sharing Continue the Change party raise many questions, Capital says. The introduction to the story goes as follows:

"When a government minister buys real estate for a low price, this always attracts attention. If he buys it for a price lower than the market level by more than 50%, questions abound. The situation becomes particularly puzzling if the owner of the company which sold the property to the minister fails to explain why he gave the minister such a 'present'. If everything ended with that, the image crisis for the Continue the Change party would perhaps have been less serious.

"It becomes a problem, however, when both the company and the minister who bought the apartment for a below-market price suddenly sell their properties at above-market prices soon after that. And if the end-buyer is another company favoured by the government and relying on its connections with the authorities, the story deserves more attention."

The former "minister" referred to in the introduction is Daniel Lorer. Continue the Change Co-leader and Finance Minister Assen Vassilev is also among the people named in the story.

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"Continue the Change and Democratic Bulgaria Headed for Ruin," caps an analysis published on SegaBG.com. The website says that the coalition of Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB), one of the two forces sharing in the current government formula, has a weak grassroots network, which was evidenced by the outcome of the local elections in late 2023. This makes it extremely hard for CC-DB to maintain a large and steady electorate.

To reverse such a significant disadvantage, a political force would need a long-term strategy to win elections. CC-DB does not seem to have one, the analysis goes. The right-wing coalition is not making much effort to increase its influence across the country. Rather than that, it is clinging to the "assemblage" with GERB-UDF the way a drowning man will clutch at a straw. This puts CC-DB in great danger of a total demise in the coming years, just as the party of the former king Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha virtually disappeared soon after governing the country single-handedly between 2001 and 2005 and in a three-party coalition between 2005 and 2009.

Right-wing voters are becoming increasingly disgusted by the solidifying bond between CC-DB, the rightists who claim to stand for change, and GERB-UDF, who stand for the status-quo, SegaBG.com says. CC-DB enthusiasts find it ever more difficult to swallow the growing closeness with GERB-UDF for the sake of Bulgaria's Euro-Atlantic orientation and political stability. The forthcoming European elections will show the extent of the voters' disillusionment and how far, or near, CC-DB is from total ruin.

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Discussing the hearing of candidates to the Constitutional Court, the President of the Bulgarian Institute for Legal Initiatives, Bilyana Gyaurova, said on Bulgarian National Radio that the procedure is "a very well stage-managed play". Gyaurova said that the National Assembly elects people to high public offices not when the term of the previous office-holders expires but when it decides that it is politically ready. The election happens "only after the political bargaining comes to the point of naming concrete individuals. As we saw, the whole procedure is well-orchestrated," she said.

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A parliamentary hearing of Defence Minister Todor Tagarev led the MPs of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) to reiterate their call for his resignation, Duma says on page one. The Socialists had asked Tagarev to appear in the National Assembly to give details about his visit to the United States. The BSP accused Tagarev of trying to get Bulgaria involved in the conflict in the Red Sea and wanting to close media outlets. MPs Atanas Zafirov and Borislav Gutsanov described the minister's trip across the Atlantic as a publicity stunt, a meaningless image-boosting visit which brought no real results, because the sides did not negotiate anything new and did not sign anything different from what was already there, Duma reports.

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Wang Min, Charge d'Affaires at the Chinese Embassy in Bulgaria, writes in 24 Chasa about the mission of Chinese diplomacy in the wake of the Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs, held in Beijing on December 27-28. The conference discussed the building of what the Chinese leadership calls "a global community of shared future". Wang says this slogan is particularly relevant in the current period of turbulence and transformation in the world. "Building a global community of shared future means creating an open, inclusive, pure and beautiful world marked by lasting peace, universal security and common prosperity," the diplomat explains. "We stand for an equal and orderly multipolar world and inclusive economic globalization which is beneficial for all."

China and Bulgaria are bound by a longstanding, deep friendship, she says. In the year of the 75th anniversary of bilateral diplomatic relations, Beijing is ready to work with Sofia to build a better future, Wang says.