The Bulgarian telecom regulator Tuesday announced it will organise an auction to award frequency resource for a new GSM operator.

Bidding for the 20-year licence will start at 38 mln levs.

'We opted for an auction format because it is the most competitive,' said Veselin Bozhkov, chairman of the Communications Regulation Commission.

The auction is expected to take place in late July.

The decision was taken on Tuesday when the commission approved the tender documents.

The auction announcement will be published in the Official Gazette within a week.

A total of 12 companies have so far submitted letters of intent.

The procedure will be open only to bidders with telecom expertise. They will also have to meet a yet-to-be-announced requirement for a minimum turnover for 2007.

Bulgaria currently has three GSM carriers: Mobiltel, Globul and vivatel.(Dnevnik)

Bulgaria's attractiveness as an emerging market destination for retail investment is on the wane as the country slips four spots to end up as no.16 in the 2008 Global Retail Development Index (GRDI), a study of retail investment attractiveness among 30 emerging markets conducted by management consulting firm A.T. Kearney.

While Eastern and Central Europe as a whole remain attractive for retail investment, the window of opportunity for large-scale supermarket and convenience store build-outs will likely close over the next year or two, according to the GRDI.

The opportunity for entry into Eastern Europe is for wave-2 retailers - do-it-yourself, consumer electronics and apparel retailers, as multi-level fashion malls and mixed-use centers are cropping up throughout the region. Nine of the 12 Eastern European countries in last year's GRDI Index retained a presence on the 2008 Index of 30 countries.

According to A.T. Kearney, the region's gloss is coming off due to economic trends like inflation, fuel prices and challenges like political volatility and regulatory framework.

At the top of the rankings, Vietnam leaps from fourth in the 2007 GRDI to first place in 2008, ending India's three-year reign as the most attractive emerging market destination for retail investment.

Published since 2001, the GRDI helps retailers prioritize their global development strategies by ranking the retail expansion attractiveness of emerging countries based on a set of 25 variables including economic and political risk, retail market attractiveness, retail saturation levels, and the difference between gross domestic product growth and retail growth. The GRDI focuses on opportunities for mass merchant and food retailers, which are typically the bellwether for modern retailing concepts in a country. (Dnevnik)

A four-level retail center with a build area of 5,844 sq m will be operational in Pazardjik, Southern Bulgaria, by the fall of 2009, said Ivo Kolushev, manager of project investor Litos-iBuild.

The 6.5 mln euro development will be funded by the local Investbank.

The retail center will occupy a 1,661 sq m site bought by Litos-iBuild from the Pazardjik municipality. It paid 840,000 levs with taxes.

The ground level of the store will be leased to a Sofia-based supermarket operator, said Kolushev, withholding the name of the company because pen is yet to be put to paper.

The mall will have a total of 120 retail outlets.

The mall management duties go to Petar Dudolenski who is already in charge of similar operations in Sofia, Varna, Plovdiv and Ruse.

The building contractor Build has began preparing the construction site with shoring due to begin soon.(Dnevnik)

Some 62% of Bulgarian retail deposits were in the custody of five of the nation's banks by the end of April, shows data of the central bank.

The top five banks in terms of assets - UniCredit Bulbank, DSK Bank, UBB, Raiffeisenbank (Bulgaria) EAD and Postbank, managed 12.6 bln levs in household deposits by the end of the review period.

The total domestic retail deposit base stood at 20.3 bln levs, up 31% over the past year.

The data released by the central bank did not indicate the market share of each of the banks.

Intense competition has lifted deposit rates to 9-12% in the past couple of months.

In December 2007, the rate on time deposits denominated in the local currency reached 4.54%, a fresh peak after the introduction of the currency board, the central bank said in its latest economic overview.(Dnevnik)

Sidenor, the Greek steel products group, will pump 400 mln euro over the next five years in its Bulgarian steel making unit Stomana Industry, Sidenor board member Sarados Milios said in Pernik where he attended the launch of a new line for long products.

The deployment of the investment will be conditional on the allocation of additional greenhouse emission quotas under the Kyoto Protocol.

The investment plans have been prompted by the creation of a joint venture with Newcor of the U.S. which will provide vast market opportunities for the Greek company.

Stomana Industry, which ships 80% of its output abroad, controls 52% of the domestic market for steel products.

In 2007, the company manufactured 800,000 tons. The newly opened unit for long products, which cost 80 mln euro, will double the output capacity of the steel maker.(Dnevnik)

Indian steel maker Arcelor Mittal is interested in buying up Kremikovtzi assets after the stricken Bulgarian steel maker is put up for auction as a result of an insolvency procedure, Arcelor board member Volker Schwich was quoted by news agency BTA as saying Tuesday.

The Arcelor executive told the news agency the procedure was likely to last some four months. Afterwards, Arcelor would like to acquire all production assets and operate a fully-integrated plant.

Arcelor Mittal, controlled by Lakshmi Mittal, brother of current Kremikovtzi owner Pramod Mittal, is drafting a letter to Bulgarian prime minister Sergei Stanishev, detailing the company's commitments and the obligations it will assume after a possible take-over.

There will also be deals with all creditors, including the holders of bonds collaterised with Kremikovtzi assets and the state-controlled suppliers like Bulgargaz, NEK and BDZ.

No further information was made available on the percentage at which the bond nominal will be repaid. Schwich said the creditors and Arcelor would most likely meet halfway.

Arcelor Mittal intends to inject $150 mln as working capital in Kremikovtzi on top of the $30 mln loan that was extended last week.

Another $30 mln will be slated for immediate eco investment with a further $120 mln to be spent through the end of 2009.

Arcelor acknowledges the challenges of Kremikovtzi's environmental performance but has connections in Brussels that will ensure the plant is not denied an integrated pollution prevention and control permit.

The Indian steel maker plans to invest a total of $500 mln in Kremikovtzi over the next five years, reviving the production of cold-rolled products.

Approached for comment, deputy economy minister Nina Radeva said that, going forward, the ministry will have to receive a letter from the plant owner, notifying that an agreement has been reached with one of the candidate buyers.

Last week, sources from the bondholders committee told Dnevnik they were closing in on an agreement with Arcelor Mittal for the repayment of the bond and that the Indian steel maker was their top choice to acquire the Bulgarian company.(Dnevnik)

Half of the budget of Bulgaria's National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) is spent on the treatment of 5% of the patient population, found a survey conducted by Sanigest, a consulting firm implementing a World Bank project in the local health care sector.

Ensuring that patients with chronic medical conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure and asthma receive adequate out-patient care would pare significantly the expenses of the NHIF, said the report.

Hospital costs have rocketed by 400% over the past seven years as a result of the increased number of hospitalised patients.

The average spend per treatment has increased to 443 levs in 2007 from 106 levs in 2000.

One of the confusing findings of the report is that the local hospitals reported 93% of patients were discharged in improved condition while at the same time 40% were readmitted at least once more during the year and 26% were back in hospital within a month.

The experts conclude that hospitalisation was redundant in a substational number of cases as the needed treatment could have been provided by the respective GP. However, the mechanism for the allocation of the NHIF funds encourages hospitals to admit as many patients as they can.

The survey found that many Bulgarians opt to seek immediate hospitalisation as an emergency case without consulting with their GP first. As many as 14.6% of hospital patients were admitted as emergency cases in 2007.

One of the more shocking findings is that over 30% of hospital deaths are caused by poor medical care. Some 7,000 of the 21,000 hospital deaths recorded in 2007 were preventable.

The Sanigest experts have slammed the plans of the government to legislate a 70:30 shareout of treatment costs between the NHIF and the private insurance funds. They claim the introduction of this scheme would encourage some funds to offer cheap medical services in order to attract the number of patients necessary for them to get licensed but will then go bankrupt because they will be undercapitalised to meet their costs.(Dnevnik)