Watch the full conversation between Anastasia Angelova, Institutional Relations Director at Nexo, and Stefka Stoyanova, Head of Operations and Marketing at AE Ventures.
Kiril Petkov-Interview given before the newspaper ‘Capital’ - MOVE.BG
The time to choose the industries we will develop
The time has come for Bulgaria to choose its strategy for competitiveness – if we want to improve the standard of living. We can no longer sell fixed assets to finance current spending, we cannot rely on the fact that since we are in the EU we will become richer, we cannot rely on speculative global financial flows to maintain the budget. Actually the last action we have left is to borrow money, but with the speed that we are doing this, we will have only five years left before we are left with the Greek scenario, with a fallen standard of living also from our low starting point.
Analysis of all our existing companies
The next thing is that we cannot create a simple strategy based on our personal perception regardless of the expert. It is time to do a comprehensive analysis of all our existing companies (about 400 000), and all our exported products (around 5000) and analyze how to evolve over time and to choose a few that we see that have real potential to be competitive on the global market. As a strategy we must not only sort out the industries that we will choose, but also identify those that we won’t choose, because from here on in raising the standard of living can only happen by increasing our export potential. When we distinguish these potential industries, what we should not do is to subsidize them, because instead of making them more competitive, it will make them more dependent.
Our diplomatic missions help to find foreign markets
On the other hand, by utilizing the country’s potential, we can help to find foreign markets through diplomatic missions to improve standards in quality and help create common brands like Champagne in France, to make conferences and industrial fairs to exchange information and knowledge and to focus public universities, to produce specialists in these fields, and this will attract foreign investors into these industries, to share experience and technical knowledge, while at the same time attracting Bulgarians from abroad who hold managerial positions into these industries.
All of these steps are not planned through management, but rather it is just coordinating Bulgarian export potential. The big difference is what they should be doing, is striving to maintain competition between companies, and to avoid monopolies, non-market agreements, excessive market power, political patronage and uncompetitive lobbying. Each company, in each of their industries should be able to beat their market competitors, trying to offer the highest quality products and personnel. This strategy only works in highly competitive environments where there is coordination without reducing competition.
And for this not to stay only as a concept, the idea of MOVE.BG and the Center for Economic Strategies and Competitiveness is to carry out this analysis in 2015, because it’s time the first real steps are taken.
Interview given before the newspaper ‘Capital’
Photo: capital.bg
