site.btaChamber of Commerce President: Workforce Shortage Impacts All Bulgarian Employers

President of the Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) Tsvetan Simeonov said here on Thursday that both qualified and unqualified labour force shortage is a problem that impacts all employers in Bulgaria. Simeonov was speaking at a national roundtable organized under the project Functionally Sustainable Migration and Integration in Bulgaria, which partners with the BCCI and the Foundation Center for Entrepreneurship and Executive Development - Bulgaria (CEED Bulgaria) with funding from the European Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund.

Simeonov was adamant that solving the labour force shortage is key to getting a "better track for coming and investing in Bulgaria now, in these difficult times when investments are hard to find". He noted that work on reorganizing and improving the regulatory framework for the employment of foreign workers in Bulgaria is quite scattered and added: "There is a working group at the Council of Ministers, and we have an initiative group with several chambers of commerce – the Bulgarian-Italian, Bulgarian-Indian, Bulgarian-Uzbek, Confindustria [Bulgaria], and other."

Simeonov said that institutions have reacted to the issue of labour importation. He recalled that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs allocated additional funds to increase the number of consuls abroad, so that it takes less 10 months between the point of submitting an application for an interview for a work visa for Bulgaria and the actual interview, as was the case in India. The Ministry of the Interior also assisted with shortening deadlines and facilitating the procedure for importing workers from third countries.

Simeonov highlighted a meeting at the BCCI with a ministerial delegation from Uzbekistan, which discussed solving the problem of people from third countries entering Bulgaria with work visas in order to migrate to Western Europe. A possible solution that was discussed was requiring a deposit to ensure that they will stay and work in Bulgaria.