site.btaInvestBulgaria Agency Director: All Information on Investment-related Activities to Be in One Place

The process of creating an investor portal has already started and it needs to be completed \as soon as possible, Bogdan Bogdanov, Executive Director of the InvestBulgaria Agency, said Monday during a panel discussion on "Economic Development through Activation of Local Resources", which took place within the Annual Meeting of Bulgarian Municipalities, organized by the National Association of Municipalities in the Republic of Bulgaria.

Bogdanov explained that such a portal would enable all the information on investment-related activities to be gathered in one place.

According to Bogdanov, currently, one of the main investment issues is that, even at local level, it is very difficult to find information on what investment areas are available, what can be done with those lots and so forth. In his words, the investor portal will have a database of all the areas available. At a national level, it will also provide information on investment assets - companies, factories, or industries that are put up for sale.

Bogdanov added that the portal will also provide information about service providers because investors need them. He emphasized that the investors themselves will have access to the database.

In addition to the information system, regional and municipal investment units should be developed within the project, he said.

Bogdanov gave as an example that if a company comes to invest in the manufacturing sector in Bulgaria, it will take it on average between 54 and 126 weeks to start working. "Our goal is to cut these timeframes in half," he said.

Bogdanov also said that the InvestBulgaria Agency wants to improve communication with municipalities and to build a common vision and concept to present Bulgaria as an investment destination.