Changes in the Regulations of the Investment Promotion Act enable a series of reliefs for investors

Decree № 302 of November 6, 2015 on amending the Regulations for Application of the Investment Promotion Act has been promulgated in State Gazette 88 of 13.11.2015.

The Decree implements changes, directed towards reduction of the administrative burden on investors, applying for investment certificate, and regulation of the possibility for the investor to state directly in the application the required data to enable access in the public registers, and exempts from the duty to present documents provided to the InvestBulgaria Agency, related to other administrative procedures.

Reliefs are also made in the application filling process, and some of the previously required data is to no longer be necessarily requested. Implemented is a reporting form for attestation of completion of the initially stated investment.

Optimized are the requirements regarding the conditions, which are to be fulfilled, in order for the incentives, in the form of state aids, to be provided. The requirement for specification of training, in the application of the support scheme for training, is removed. In accordance to the cancelled regulatory arrangement, apart from compliance with the rest of the conditions, it was necessary for the training to include no less than 50 newly employed people, considering the financial support for the professional qualification training. The new readjustments reduce the minimum number of people to 30. A differentiated approach is introduced, in order to provide partial reimbursements for the investor for the made on his behalf in his capacity as employer mandatory contributions to the state for social insurance, for the mandatory supplementary pension insurance and mandatory health insurance for employees occupying the new work places. The period for acquiring the grants differs, depending on the region, in which the investment project is being developed. In the municipalities’ administrative borders, which for the past year have registered unemployment rates higher than the average for the country, the period is up to 24 months, and for the rest – 12 months.

Changes are made in the regulations for priority investment projects. The requirement in the general case for creation and retention of the minimum annual employed people is reduced from 200 to 150. In the provision of gratuitous financial support for priority investment projects in the manufacturing industry, the maximum intensity of the support of 10% is connected to the minimum investment threshold required for certification.