“Providing an effective legal framework and supporting small and medium enterprises to reach new markets are among our main priorities. Possible cooperation between the Ministry of Economy and the World Bank can accelerate the implementation of result-oriented reforms.”, said the Minister of Economy Bojidar Loukarsky at a meeting with the World Bank’s Permanent Representative for Bulgaria Mr. Tony Thompson held today.
During the meeting, Minister Loukarsky highlighted as his priority the need to reduce the administrative burden on small and medium enterprises and to provide opportunities for them to reach third countries’ markets through establishing of business clusters. „This will contribute to increasing the competitiveness and will stimulate of Bulgarian economy“, Minister Loukarsky added.
Based on these priorities, three areas of potential cooperation were defined in order to improve the conditions for doing business in Bulgaria. These are: optimizing the legal framework for business, developing of measures to stimulate innovation, and ensuring of fair competition.
“The Government of Bulgaria has had lots of initiatives for encouraging of innovations. However, they are sometimes carried out independently of each other and it is necessary to unite the efforts in order to achieve a greater effect“, Mr Tompson pointed out. In this context, the World Bank could provide analytical and advisory support to the Ministry of Economy in the field of innovation in order to stimulate economic growth. Other proposed measures include collaboration between the Ministry and the World Bank’s business team to improve the position of Bulgaria in organization’s prestigious rating of the ease of doing business.
The possible cooperation between both institutions would also contribute to improving the degree of utilization of EU funds, was the general opinion.