To build middle class, Bulgaria will need 15 years

It will take at least 15 years of hard work for a middle class to emerge in Bulgaria that is measurable with the EU standards, according to Rangel Cholakov, the president of the National Crafts Chamber. He was speaking Tuesday at the 7th annual session of the Advisory Board with HWK-Koblenz Mittelstandbuero Balkan (Bureau for Supporting the Middle Class in the Balkans).

Bulgaria is part of the EU but it does not have a middle class because the EU standards for a middle class are far from the Bulgarian notion.

German Ambassador Michael Geier noted that the economic power and the future of Bulgaria depend on its middle class.

According to the deputy chief of the Bulgarian Industrial Association, Georgi Shivarov, the fact that nearly all of Bulgarian businesses and small and mid-sized is a good precondition for building a middle class is not enough to improve the competitiveness of the Bulgarian economy.

He believes that incentives are necessary to make strategic investors use Bulgarian subcontractors and that the national industry needs consolidation. Industrial development would help this country reverse the foreign trade deficit and would change the real sector which now mostly processes imported resources, Shivarov said.

BTA