Bulgaria president high on China trade

The trade volume between Bulgaria and China is expected to double within five years, said Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev on Tuesday.

During a forum held by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) in Beijing, Plevneliev expressed his country's determination to boost trade and economic cooperation with China.

This year will see the 65th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries and will also witness bilateral trade and economic cooperation being raised to a higher level, said Plevneliev, highlighting future cooperation in agriculture and food processing as well as infrastructure construction.

Plevneliev paid a four-day state visit to China from Sunday and met Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday. The two presidents vowed to -streng-then the economic and trade -cooperation.

According to data posted by China's Ministry of Commerce in early December, Bulgaria's exports to China rose 0.4 percent year-on-year to 506 million euros ($691.2 million) in the first 10 months of 2013 while imports from China reached 649 million euros, down 1.6 percent.

CCPIT's vice chairman Yu Ping insisted that there were "great potential and favorable policies" for business in Bulgaria and encouraged more enterprises, especially private ones, to invest there.

The forum was attended by a total of 300 representatives from over 150 enterprises from the two countries, including venture capital, Internet technology, wines and textiles. It concluded Tuesday with three letters of intent being signed on the spot.

"Going global is consi-dered as a way out of the domestic dampened textile industry due to increasing costs and overcapacity," Liu Yongfang, a -Chinese participant from the textile sector, told the Global Times Tuesday.

But Liu does not intend to seal a deal with Bulgarian peers in a rush. Like Liu, Chinese participants are more concerned about the purchasing power of the region as well as local laws.

Meanwhile, many representatives of Bulgarian enterprises showed great interest in doing business in China.

"I think China has a fairly mature business environment. The market is huge and will bring me more profits," Ivan Todoroff, a Bulgarian wine retailer and distributor, told the Global Times Tuesday.

China's "bold reform agenda for the next decade" will contribute to freer trade, more transparency, increased stabi-lity and predictability of laws as well as "greater opportunities for international business," said Atanas Nenov, executive director with wholly state-owned industrial zone developer National Company Industrial Zones.

But "it would be greatly bene-ficial for the initiative to find more flexible ways of fund absorption while complying with EU regulations," Nenov told the Global Times Tuesday in an e-mail, referring to a fund of $10 billion which China pledged to 16 countries from Central and Eastern Europe in April 2012.

The funding has been -pending since then "mostly due to framework and regulatory obstacles," said Nenov.