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Rosen Plevneliev in Brussels: I Hope That We Will be Able to Position Bulgaria as a Good Place for Doing Business

The opportunities Bulgaria has to strengthen its economic ties with the Latin American and Caribbean states will be among the topics President Rosen Plevneliev will discuss during his forthcoming talks in Brussels. The Head of State is in the Belgian capital to take part in the EU and Community of Latin American and Caribbean states (CELAC) Summit. State and government leaders from 61 countries from the EU and the Latin American and Caribbean basin will take part in the summit in Brussels. “I hope that we will be able to position Bulgaria as a good place for doing business,” President Rosen Plevneliev summarized his expectations of the summit.

“The advantages of our country are the low taxes, the lowest costs and the opportunities we provide to do business in the EU. Bulgaria is stable and offers favorable conditions for the Latin American and Caribbean states to position their trade routes through our country,” President Rosen Plevneliev told Bulgarian journalists in Brussels. “Bulgaria’s annual trade with Latin America is merely about 230 million US dollars and we cannot be happy about that, we can achieve a lot more. At the same time the EU is the first trade partner of that region and we can achieve more if we use the EU platform to strengthen our trade ties,” the President added.

Within the framework of the EU-CELAC summit, the President is expected to exchange opinions with his counterparts from Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina. These are the countries which comprise the largest share of the Bulgarian export for the region. “The prospects of the Bulgarian economy are expressed in the increasingly more active Bulgarian companies and the growing export. Recently we have been observing an expansion the Bulgarian business into new markets. Our country can offer high quality in the ICT sector, education, machine-building, renewable energy sources, engineering, agriculture and food production,” President Plevneliev further said.

Online voting is the future. It is due to be introduced in many countries and technologies allow that to happen, the President commented regarding the referendum he offered to be conducted together with the local elections on 25 October. “We owe that to the Bulgarians who travel around the world and want to see that the state is on their side. They should take advantage of their right granted by the Constitution to vote no matter where they are in the world,” President Rosen Plevneliev emphasized.

“I do not question the possibilities modern technologies have to guarantee secure and fair elections to a far greater extent when voting online than when voting with ballots,” the Head of State was adamant. The President gave as an example Estonia, where online voting was introduced way back in 2005.