site.btaUPDATED BTA, Amcham Sign Partnership Agreement

The Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) and the American Chamber of Commerce in Bulgaria (AmCham) agreed Thursday to cooperate. "Today BTA is broadening the scope of its partners by adding AmCham," BTA Director General Kiril Valchev said on the occasion of the signing of the partnership agreement.

BTA already has such agreement with the German-Bulgarian Chamber of Industry and Commerce, the French-Bulgarian Chamber and the Bulgarian-Romanian Chamber. 

There are over 50 such bilateral chambers and the big goal is to make their presence in the BTA news flow, said the BTA Director General.

In his words, the big goal of having such agreements is to provide more information about the opportunities for foreign businesses here and Bulgarian businesses abroad. 

By the agreement signed Thursday, AmCham will provide information about its work and the work of its members on a daily basis, and BTA will publish this information.

The two organizations will also partner in other areas from the AmCham agenda, the BTA Director General and AmCham CEO Ivan Mihaylov said before signing the agreement.

The AmCham CEO said that the organization recognizes BTA as a strategic partner. He added that the document was signed in the context of the marking of the 120th anniversary of the establishment of Bulgaria-US diplomatic relations.

"Our aim is to provide quality information because it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between quality information and its opposite. That is why we recognize BTA as a strategic partner. We have already had joint projects in which we have proved that we have an established partnership in various ventures. From now on, our common expectations become even greater as the dynamics of relations in business and society has to reach an even higher level. We also see the US as a strategic partner in topics such as much needed innovation,” Mihaylov said.

He committed that AmCham would provide relevant quality information which reaches everyone in the right way.

The date of the Bulgarian-American diplomatic relations coincides with the date of the first BTA news

Kiril Valchev noted that the partnership agreement is signed in the week in which the US celebrates Independence Day. He said he had prepared as a gift for US Ambassador Kenneth Merten, who was a guest at the partnership ceremony, a package of news items that BTA had released on July 4 back in the years. "The first one we found in our archive dates back to 1931, but the truth is that the history of BTA's relations with its American partner the Associated Press is older than the history of Bulgarian and American diplomatic relations," Valchev noted. He pointed out that as early as the first BTA news in 1898, BTA started using the Associated Press and American newspapers. Exactly five years after the first BTA news on February 16, 1898 - on February 16, 1903 - the Bulgarian representative in Istanbul Ivan Geshov wrote a letter to the Bulgarian government that the United States had appointed John Jackson from Athens to be the first representative in Bulgaria, Valchev said. "It can be said that the date of the Bulgarian-US diplomatic relations coincides with the date of the first BTA news," the Director General concluded.

The United States is among Bulgaria's most important trading partners

Valchev pointed out that the US is among Bulgaria's most significant trading partners. He quoted recent data showing that the investments from the US in Bulgaria are about EUR 850 million. According to Economy Ministry figures, trade between the two countries amounted to USD 1.3 billion, with a year-on-year growth of 20%. American-only companies in Bulgaria are more than 100 and they have created more than 30,000 jobs, Valchev further noted. The important thing is that the US market is among the main export destinations for Bulgaria and especially for Bulgarian products in the high-tech, energy and automotive sectors, ICT technologies, pharmaceuticals, outsourcing. Three of the top five ICT companies that have been certified by the Investment Promotion Act in the last decade are from the US.