site.btaShortage of Professionals Is Among Businesses' Top Three Problems in Last 10 Years - Bulgarian Industrial Capital Association

Vassil Velev, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Bulgarian Industrial Capital Association (BICA), Thursday said the human resource problem, the shortage of professionals with the right education and qualifications, has been among the top three problems cited by businesses in the last 10 years or so. In the last few years, it has been second only to the worldwide problem of insecurity. He talked at a roundtable on the link between education and the labour market, with a focus on the necessary reforms, organized by BICA.

Velev said the lasting solution to this problem requires reforms in education. He presented BICA's analysis of problems in the education system from a labour market perspective.

In his view, the cited data should spur action to step up reforms, or else there will be no one working in Bulgaria in ten years. The analysis demonstrates once again the correlation between education, living standards and GDP growth. The data, which cover over 40 years, show that the higher the quality of education measured by objective test scores, the higher the average GDP growth, said Velev.

He cited data for 2022 based on Bulgaria's participation in the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), conducted among ninth-graders, and commented that they are deplorable and are getting worse. Those are the people who go to university or enter the labour market once they finish secondary school, he said.