site.btaMedia Review: October 20

ECONOMY

Every real estate owner will get a personal postal code for their property (apartment, house, office) at the end of 2026, Communications Regulation Commission (CRC) Chair Ivan Dimitrov tells 24 Chasa in an interview which is the leading item in the daily. Dimitrov says the information system that generates the codes has already been built, and it is possible even now to learn the code for a given property. Personal postal codes will increase accuracy in courier deliveries and will help police officers find the right address they need to visit, he notes. People can test the electronic system via the internet portal of the CRC by searching for information and verifying the data. The model which has existed up until now no longer corresponds to the way people live and shop, Dimitrov explains. The idea is to have an integrated national code system. It will be declared to the Universal Postal Union.

* * *

The World Bank (WB) has urged Bulgaria to increase its taxes on older cars and real estate in order to boost municipal revenues and reduce harmful emissions, Trud says in its main story, covering a WB report titled “Rethinking Municipal Finance: Bulgaria Subnational Public Finance Review”. The country’s vehicle tax includes а property component and an environmental coefficient. Within the property component, there is a car age coefficient, which, according to the WB, undermines environmental objectives. The car age factor in the tax formula effectively rewards the oldest and most polluting cars, as its value is smallest for the oldest cars. Trud says that many Bulgarians own old cars which they use very rarely. The daily argues that it would not make much sense to pay higher tax on a vehicle which is not regularly used. The WB suggests that if environmental goals are prioritized, the age-linked coefficient could be removed or modified to incentivize ownership of newer, cleaner cars.

The WB notes in its report that property tax yields in Bulgaria are notably low, especially in smaller municipalities. Tax assessments are generally much lower than the actual market value of real estate, the Bank says. It estimates that in Sofia, the gap between market prices and tax assessments of properties is 3.5-4.5 times on average. Therefore, the WB recommends raising property tax assessments. It draws attention to the existence of numerous tax exemptions and reductions.

* * *

Footwear production, once a prominent sector of the Bulgarian economy, has drastically faded, 24 Chasa says. The industry used to put out between 10,000 and 12,000 pairs of shoes daily. Nowadays, there are about 20 manufacturers employing an average of 20 workers each, the minimum number necessary to make a pair of shoes, says Plamen Ivanov, Chair of the Union of the Leather, Fur, Footwear and Haberdashery Industries, interviewed by the daily. Ivanov predicts that the sector will vanish by 2030 unless something is done about it. In 2024, Bulgaria exported EUR 154 million worth of footwear to other countries while imports amounted to EUR 333 million, according to data from the National Statistical Institute and the Economy Ministry, the paper says.

* * *

The media continue to cover the waste disposal crisis in the Sofia boroughs of Krasno Selo and Lyulin following the expiry of the service contracts and the delay in signing new contracts.

Krasno Selo Mayor Tsveta Nikolaeva told BNT1, the main channel of Bulgarian National Television, that the waste disposal situation in her borough is much better now than it was at the onset of the crisis, but still, it is not what it should be. Nikolaeva said she would like to believe that the crisis has resulted from a series of unfortunate events rather than deliberate acts. “Many people changed their habits,” she said, referring to the increased use of separate-collection containers over the last couple of weeks. She praised the volunteers who have helped mitigate the situation. The mayor admitted she does not know how exactly the crisis will be resolved.

POLITICS

Former justice minister Krum Zarkov said on Nova TV that Bulgarian society will not move forward as long as the state remains “contaminated” by assertions that it is governed by mafia. According to Zarkov, everyone stands to lose from whatever developments may follow GERB leader Boyko Borissov’s suggestion about a reformatting of the government.

* * *

Public protests have become a fetish in Bulgaria, constitutional law expert Borislav Tsekov says in an analysis in Trud. The article starts with a comment on what Tsekov calls “relatively large-scale protests of the opposition Left-liberal minority”, held in the United States over the weekend under the motto “No kings”. The author says that President Donald Trump “didn’t give in, didn’t behave defensively, didn’t jump into explanation mode”. Being who he is, President Trump just mocked the protests, and on a more serious note, he simply told Fox News: “I am not a king.” Tsekov comments that, in a mature democracy, a protest is not a threat to the incumbency but a natural milieu of public life. “In a democratic society, a change of government happens through elections, not street action,” the author notes.

“Something different has happened in Bulgaria over the last decade,” he goes on to say. “A political minority styling itself as ‘the democratic community’ has turned protesting into a fetish. It has given it the halo of a paramount political act which can supplant the will of voters, a source of legitimacy for the incumbency.” What happens when democratic power succumbs to “the false myth” of protest? – Tsekov asks rhetorically. His answer is: “Chaos and time vacuum.” And he recalls developments in Bulgaria after 2020. He urges a restoration of normal political order in Bulgaria. “Protesting is a way to express yourself, not to govern a country,” Tsekov says. “When political culture in Bulgaria shifts back to this bedrock, the nation will definitively rise out of the chaos and the time vacuum of bogus change,” he concludes.

EDUCATION

Approximately 43,000 Bulgarians aged between 15 and 34 halted or interrupted their education or occupational training in 2024, Duma says on page one, citing National Statistical Institute data. The total number included 5,800 young people who abandoned their studies in order to work, and 13,000 youths who halted their education for financial reasons. Almost 9,000 people blamed the education system itself. In the same age group, 58.5% of employees who had completed their education reported a high or very high degree of correspondence between their job and their education.

* * *

It has been known for years that Bulgarian school-goers are bad at mathematics, and now it has become clear that the descent occurs in fifth grade, SegaBG.com says. According to the website, this transpired from the results of a nationwide entry-level maths test to which sixth-graders were surprisingly put by the Education Ministry on October 3. The kids earned an average mark of 3.42 points on the traditional 2-to-6 scale used in the Bulgarian education system, where 2 stands for “failed” and 6 for “excellent”. Observers commented that if the mark is presented in a per-cent format (44.5%), it is a downright “failed”. It arguably shows not just the low maths knowledge level of the kids but also the failings of their teachers and the deficiencies of the syllabus, the story says.

CRIME

A 15-year-old boy died of his wounds on Sunday evening after being stabbed in a Sofia shopping mall, the media report. A suspect of the same age was arrested, and an eyewitness was taken to the police for questioning. The reason for the row remains to be identified.

Mediapool.bg says the stabbing happened during a row between two groups in the mall at Alexander Stamboliiski Boulevard. An ambulance arrived at the scene four minutes after the incident was reported, but members of the victim’s family had already driven the boy to a hospital. In a media statement, Sofia Mayor Vasil Terziev expressed profound grief over the killing and said that in addition to being a modern city, the capital should be a safe place, the website reports.

BNT1 quoted eyewitnesses as saying that the security guards were too slow in intervening. Late in the night, relatives of the victim gathered at the hospital and later in front of the Interior Ministry offices to demand the arrest of those responsible for the beating and the stabbing, the television said.