Bulgaria wants to become bridge linking China, Europe

Bulgaria wanted to become a bridge linking China and Europe, and the preparation of several large logistics projects was underway, Bulgarian officials said here on Wednesday.

"Bulgaria wants to be a natural bridge between Asia and Europe, and to take full advantage of the fact that the Silk Road passes through its territory," Stamen Yanev, Executive Director of InvestBulgaria Agency (IBA) said at the official launch of the report "European interest in the investment agreement with China", jointly organized by IBA and the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Using its strategic location, Bulgaria could help China to reach the European Union (EU) market, said Yanev, whose agency is a government institution providing information, contacts and project management support to potential investors.

"For our country, China is an important partner, and at the operational level we will try our best to attract as much as possible Chinese investments," Yanev added.

Valentina Alexandrova, advisor to the Minister of Economy Bojidar Loukarsky, echoed that certainly, Bulgaria regarded China as a strategic investor.

"We are currently working on some really big, important projects, mainly in the field of logistics, because Bulgaria really has great competitive advantages in the logistics in terms of EU-China relations," she said.

These projects were supported personally by minister Loukarsky, but so far they could not be made public because they were not in a sufficiently advanced stage, Alexandrova said.

"They are definitely a priority for the Ministry of Economy," she added.

According to the statistics from her ministry, during the period 2004-Q3 2014 the Chinese investment in Bulgaria reached 139.6 million euros (about 156 million U.S. dollars), with the focus mainly in the areas of agriculture, automobile, renewable energy and environmental protection.