The preservation of macro-economic stability, improvement of the business environment, the implementation of closer links between educational institutions and businesses, promoting links between individual industries and industries in Bulgaria and creating favourable conditions for their integration into tech clusters were the points of agreement among participants in the first meeting of the Council for Economic Development and Social Policy on the theme of “competitiveness and investment priorities”. Participants in the Council meeting included Minister of Economy, Energy and Tourism Delyan Dobrev, deputy ministers, regional governors, and representatives of trade unions, employers and NGOs.
Speaking at the opening of the Council, President Rosen Plevneliev said that the nations that developed were those that offered the most productive and best business environment. “For Bulgaria it is time to look beyond highways, to increase production and to build up its industrial zones that are grouped in clusters,” the President emphasised. He said that he expected the Bulgaria 2020 National Development Programme to create the conditions for construction of this kind of high-tech centres and parks in several of the large cities of the country, apart from the capital city Sofia, also Plovdiv, Rousse, Varna and Bourgas.
President Plevneliev said that Bulgaria urgently needs to create an environment for accelerated investment attraction, which should become a strategic national goal. This requires looking for concrete solutions on how to change the law on investment and what additional incentives are available to investors. “We cannot be good at everything, but we cannot and do not have priorities,” the President said. He said for that the creation of each cluster, a working group should be set up, including representatives of business, professional organisations, education and academia, research centres, representatives of executive and local government.
“It would be good for institutions to be close to the clusters and this is in line with the decentralization process,” he said. President Plevneliev emphasised that the process of administrative decentralization is a positive one, but should be very well defined and integrated into the state strategy.
“When countries have a plan, then investors and businesses believe and invest,” the President told the participants in the Council meeting. "We expect that the executive will move fast, so that by the end of June, a preliminary version of the Bulgaria 2020 National Development Programme will be ready, in which we may also include today’s proposals. This programme will represent a contract with the European Commission and will be a powerful tool to implement reforms on the basis of a sustainable strategy,” President Plevneliev said.
Representatives of employers said that the state could help them by improving the business environment, the introduction of electronic government in municipalities, and ensuring fairness. Trade unions emphasised the need for the labour market to be a leading factor in determining educational programmes at universities and vocational schools.
The President of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Nikola Sabotinov, emphasised the readiness of the Academy to assist in the creation of technology clusters in the country and the implementation of innovative technologies.