Greece is a traditional tourist destination for Bulgaria. In 2011, one million Bulgarians visited it and 1.2 million Greeks visited Bulgaria. Greeks are the largest group of tourists both during the holidays and for skiing. Over 180 thousand cars crossed the Bulgarian border with Greece during our national holiday between 6 and 11 September.
You know the economies of both Bulgaria and Greece well. From an investor perspective, what are the advantages and disadvantages of each of them?
This is evident from the industries in which Greece invests. These are banking, telecommunications, manufacturing of metals, petroleum products, glass, cement, food processing, real estate, computers, while Bulgaria invests primarily in real estate. When we talk about advantages, Greeks come here because when they produce their products here, they are competitive and can be exported to the European Union and all markets. The reasons, as I said, are the low costs of electricity, gas, labour, low taxes, and all this is in a member state of the European Union. I.e. our legislation is the same. Geographical proximity is very favourable too – it takes about an hour to get from Athens to Sofia by plane and the distance from Thessaloniki to Sofia is 300 km. The economic advantages Bulgaria offers are indisputable. Many Greek companies openly admit that if they had not transferred their production activities to Bulgaria 10-15 years ago, they would already have gone bankrupt. And now, the branches in Bulgaria and Romania support the Greek parent companies.
What is your forecast for Greece? Will it be able to remain in the euro zone and emerge from the crisis?
Greece has always been able to pull itself together in difficult times and to find the appropriate solution for seemingly hopeless issues. It should do what Bulgaria did in 1996 – it should boldly implement radical economic measures and cut costs. It is also important for Greece to find a formula of how to drive the Greek industry to start producing and exporting, and thus to accumulate funds with which to repay the loans taken. If these things happen, Greece will emerge from the crisis. It has major advantages over Bulgaria - developed infrastructure, developed tourism, large merchant fleet. If it uses these advantages wisely, they will help it to emerge from the crisis. However, the Bulgarian experience has shown that this cannot happen without radical measures. In 1996, we had a huge foreign debt, 500% inflation, high unemployment. And thanks to the fact that several governments dared and introduced the measures that the creditors had identified for Bulgaria, we emerged from the crisis. We are now stable and we are progressing, yet slowly. Bulgaria has another great advantage - we have all agreed that we will spend as much money as we have produced and we will not borrow. And although they are tempting us with favourable loans and with statements that it would not be a problem if we slightly increased the deficit, the Bulgarian governments are not succumbing. Although slow, the Bulgarian progress is apparent.
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