BCCI has achieved its goals and plans for 2013 in service of business

During the regular Annual Meeting of the Management Board of the Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the 2013 Annual Report and the Programme for 2014 were adopted. It was noted that the Chamber has managed to achieve its goals set in the previous Programme and to fulfill its financial plans. This has created also preconditions to successfully carry out the plans for the current year. 

In order to meet the needs of the businesses, BCCI laid emphasis on its activities towards increasing the awareness of the companies as regards the European legislation, on the possibilities for them to participate in projects in order to enhance their competitiveness; as well as on the elaboration, application and implementation of projects. Thus, 41 seminars have been conducted with 1090 participants. New key projects have been drawn.

In the field of the foreign economic cooperation in 2013, totally 169 meetings have been held with ambassadors and commercial representatives of foreign countries, representatives of counterpart organisations and foreign companies; 12 international forums and business delegations have been organized.

To many of the companies the Chamber is the only Organisation in Bulgaria providing business services under the observance of the international standards. This fact may be proved by the following data: 26 140 documents and 4223 certificates have been validated.

The Court of Arbitration has completed 41 international and 679 domestic disputes. The claims laid under the domestic arbitration cases amounted to BGN 94 823 572, and  under the international - to EUR 18 556 442.

Some of the priorities in the activities of the BCCI this year are:

• Enhancing the awareness of the companies as regards the dynamically changing European legislation;
• Promoting the export orientation of the companies, organizing trainings on foreign trade, providing customs consultancy;
• Participation in projects under the Programmes COSME, HORIZON 2020;
• Company surveys on current business issues;
• Optimization of the existing features of the electronic trade register, adding new functionality to the information system of the BCCI to generate the GS1-logistic label standards;
• Updating the package of services provided by the BCCI to its member companies;
• Extended application of the electronic arbitration and greater electronic information transfer.

The 2014 Program remains open during the year and will be duly updated in accordance with the country’s economic situation, and supplemented with the ideas and suggestions either by our partners, as well as by companies and branch organisations.

As regards the activities of the BCCI on facilitating the business conditions for the micro, small and medium sized enterprises, the difficulties arising from the current regulations were discussed, in particular those from the Law on Local Taxes and Fees, the Subsurface Resources Act, the Water Act, the Law on Corporate Income Tax, etc.