Bulgaria Medal

Bulgaria Medal

Bulgaria Medal In The News

Interview Of Novinite.com With Curtis M., CEO And Handling Partner At Arceland, An Asset Management Fund Based In Sofia, Bulgaria, And Member Of The Bulgarian Land And Property Owners Association.

Other firms are based abroad and your office is in Bulgaria, would you say this is an issue or an advantage?

That's an advantage. In the early days of the transition following the fall of communism it was very standard for foreign law firms, foreign investment firms, project firms, to come, stay ten days, go back, come stay 10 days - the economies of these areas have grown to the point where you can't do that, you've got to be here 24 / seven, so we think being here full time is a practical prerequisite to be handy.

The situation in Bulgaria is dynamic, it changes each day and if you are back in the States, or London, or some other place, you are behind, I mean it. So the power to stay real-time, current with what is going on on the marketplace, is critical.

I suspect we need to be clear - it isn't as attractive as it used to be three years back. Three years ago there was a big inflow of what I call "hot money" round the EU accession.

Folk got awfully excited and extrapolated that Bulgaria is soon to be like the UK or something like this... Not so fast! Likely a lot of money came in too swiftly.

Then we had this disastrous financial crisis that affected everyone, particularly in Bulgaria it affected commercial banks, so credit was dried out. Our view of that is that that period is now gone and that money is now gone.

Now the driver for values of real-estate is really earnings levels and domestic demand of Bulgarians. The bad news is that Bulgarians are the poorest folk in the EU so it starts at a really low level.

But the better news is the growth in that income is one of the fastest because it is from such a low base so as a percentage it is growing faster than in the EU generally.

Take as an example the Bulgarian government's proposal to increase the minimum wage by 12.5% in Sep - that's an astronomic figure as a percentage.

In most nations it is one, 2 or 3 p.c., so that tells you that there's big room to grow for these wages and as folks have more revenue to spend.
Then the value of things they buy goes up with it, so we think the price of real-estate will stabilize at a rate of growth of 5-6% and that is a reliable, understandable, and convincing number for ten years, as opposed to twenty percent or thirty percent or 40 percent for 18 months or so.

So we think, long-term, if expansion rates some place else are at 4% or five pc, Bulgaria will be 2 or 3 points above that as a percentage.

You've got to distinguish between sorts of real-estate. I believe probably the soundest investment in Bulgarian real-estate right now is farming. It is farm land.

Bulgaria has an enormous potential that is unfulfilled at about that point vis its rural development. This is one sort of real-estate.

On the other hand, if you would like to chat about residential, or commercial, or office - those are very different stories.

We went along in the retail sector, we've been terribly underserved as a square meters per person. Now we have that great explosion of retail space n the year, particularly in Sofia.

There are three or four malls that've been delivered in the year so I think we are at a balance now. I suspect there is more retail capacity than maybe the town can absorb fast so that'd be a rather more tricky area.

The same goes for offices because so many of these complexes are office and retail together. There was an enormous delivery of inventory particularly in the Class A level, office, and again you see a sharp drop in lease rates, rental rates, because there is so much supply competing for good renters.

Overtly, the things that are Bulgarian are basically in quite an excellent condition. Doing business here is very reasonable. There are areas to be improved, there are the courts, but the practical business environment in Bulgaria is miles better than is often considered.

I'd say the largest difficulty we faced is not domestic. It's the fact that Bulgaria has such a horrible image globally which we think is terribly removed from fact but unfortunately there's no countervailing voice.

We get worried because we see continually on BBC, on CNN and the Pink Un really aggressive promotion of Croatia, of Macedonia - all of these neighboring countries, none of whom have as good a story as Bulgaria. Croatia is very special country, because she offers a good marketplace for Croatia real estate.

But the single thing you ever read about in those publications about Bulgaria is about crime, about the mafia, or full stories that get recycled and recycled. So when we go to fish for investment for potential partakers in the economy here they start from a very negative position. We spend a massive amount of time training them about the realities here.

It might be very much in Bulgaria's interest to be much more aggressive about presenting itself globally. Because it is really a miles better story. Especially in areas like public finance, the national bank, the currency - those things since the crisis in 1997 and 1998 have been amazing success stories. And little press or understanding about that outside Bulgaria. So we think this is a story that's not told much, and when it is told, it is told poorly. Our biggest challenge, I think, as a business enticing world investment is getting over that image issue, reported tagza.com.

Questions about Bulgaria Medal

Bulgaria Medal Videos

Women Team U21 ALL - 4 Duel - Bulgaria (Silver Medal) vs Italy

It has never been easier to shop for Bulgaria Medal.

Other articles you might like;

• Battle Flag

Incoming search terms:

• militar bulgaria badge paratrooper

Stop! Go See This HOT OFFER...

Monetize Your Websites With Killer Content Automatically - Click Here!