site.btaBulgaria Remains Leading Destination for High-Tech Services - AIBEST Annual Report

Bulgaria remains a leading destination for high-tech services. The country continues to be a hub for innovative services, and an established destination for services with high added value. A competitive advantage for Bulgaria is also its upcoming membership in the euro area, in addition to the country’s accession to the Schengen Area. These are among the key conclusions of the annual report of the Association for Innovation, Business Services and Technology (AIBEST), which, in a comparative Southeast European context, tracks the state and performance of companies in the outsourced business and high-tech services and processes sector in Bulgaria.

The main data in this year’s report, prepared by SeeNext, were presented by Yordan Ginev, Chairman of AIBEST Managing Board, at an event held at the Planet Schwarz Tech Theater in Sofia.

At the very beginning of the presentation, Yordan Ginev described the figures in the report as good advertising for Bulgaria and clear evidence of the country’s transformation into a digital hub for high-value-added services and services related to artificial intelligence (AI).

Bulgaria’s global positioning shows a mixed but largely competitive profile, according to one of the conclusions in AIBEST’s annual report. The country is a leader among Southeast European competitors in the Global Services Location Index and ranks among the world’s top ten in regulatory frameworks and public services in the World Bank’s B-Ready assessment. Its innovation performance is also solid and improving, while broader competitiveness indicators highlight existing constraints in business efficiency and in attracting and retaining talent.

“For yet another year, we are observing the trend that Bulgaria has already become a destination where high value-added services are performed; high-tech services and R&D services continue to increase their share,” Yordan Ginev said. According to him, Bulgaria’s outsourced business services and processes sector continues to grow amid global technological transformation and worldwide geopolitical and geoeconomic changes.

According to the figures in the 2025 Annual Report, the operating revenues of companies in the high-tech services and processes sector grew in 2024 at an annual rate of 7.6%, nearly half the growth momentum compared to 2023, when the increase was 13.7%.

Within the sector, the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) subsector holds the largest share, representing 43.3% of the market in 2024, compared to 44.1% the previous year. The Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) subsector accounted for 38.7% in 2024, decreasing by 0.5 percentage points, while research and development activities recorded an increase of 1.2 percentage points, reaching 18%.

The data and conclusions in the report show that Bulgaria’s information and communications technology (ICT) sector has become a key driver of the country’s growth, contributing 9.6% of Bulgaria’s Gross Value Added (GVA) in 2024 and placing the country among the EU leaders by this indicator.

The report also examines the industry’s tax and social security contribution. According to the data, the tax contribution of the outsourced services sector increased by 32.6% year on year, reaching EUR 99.4 million in 2024.

Labour costs rose by 12.3% year on year to a total of EUR 3.624 billion in 2024. According to Ginev, the shift toward higher-value-added activities is a leading factor behind this increase in labor costs. For comparison, total labor costs in the industry amounted to EUR 3 billion in 2023. He emphasized the need for incentive measures to stimulate research and development activities.

The number of employees in the sector reached 105,436 full-time equivalents (FTE) in 2024, indicating stagnation, reflected in a marginal annual increase of 0.2 % after an aggressive expansion trajectory over the previous two years. Ginev believes there are conditions, such as the completion of Bulgaria’s European integration process, that could lead to a doubling of employment in the industry over the next 10 years.

Ownership is almost evenly split between local and foreign investors, with 49.7% of companies being majority-owned by investors from 45 countries. The United Kingdom, Germany, the United States, and the Netherlands account for nearly half of all foreign-owned enterprises.

Ginev highlighted three key themes for the sector: investment in education, stability and long-term planning, and finally, partnership between business, administration, and government.