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| Book a Bulgarian hotels online - www.madeinbg.com |
Book a Bulgarian hotels online. The biggest Bulgarian online hotel database, hotels, rooms, accommodations, discounts, reservations, hotel, luxury, deals, rates. Hotel accomodations for business travel, leisure travel, vacation getaways and event planning with Bulgarian Hotels. Please use Quisk Search below to view the specific Bulgarian Hotels that match your requirements or use Advanced Hotel Search.
Please click here to view all current Bulgarian Hotels
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| 27/02/2005 17:22 |
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| BulgarianPropertySale.co.uk, Bulgarian property - Bulgarian property for sale - Bulgarian properties |
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| 25/11/2004 06:09 |
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| A Super Car Made in Bulgaria |
The first Bulgarian-made car will be shown in October at the International Auto Salon in Frankfurt. The model is designed by BG inventor Roumen Antonov, who lives and works in France, Deputy Minister of Economy Milen Keremedchiev, whos on a visit to Paris, told Standart. A prototype of the chassis will be made till April 1. Three different variants will be made by the Bulgarian companies Dimex - Plovdiv, V&RUS-Plovdiv and Engineering and Development Company - Dobrich (ex-Mayak). The designer of the car will arrive in Bulgaria to make his final choice and specify which of the three companies will manufacture the chassis. BG Vesfot venture will be the partner of Roumen Antonov. It will organize the production of the first Bulgarian-made vehicle.
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| 15/08/2003 06:22 |
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| Made in Bulgaria Tag Loses to Imports |
What does it mean when a foreign company that is manufacturing a product in Bulgaria starts importing the same product from Hungary? There are two possible answers. The first is that this product is not yet manufactured in Bulgaria and the second is that it is cheaper for this company to import from another country.
This is exactly the case with Danone Serdika that is importing deserts from Hungary. The French company explained that they are just testing the market and the aim is to establish how this product sells here and whether it is worthwhile making an investment in a Bulgarian production line. The future of this investment however is determined not only by demand on the local market but by the prime cost of the "Made in Bulgaria" product.
Anyway, deserts are not a big problem and things will get serious if Danone Serdika starts importing yoghurt or if the Neftochim oil refinery starts importing fuel. A week ago Neftochim asked the Finance Ministry to endorse duty-free import of low-octane fuel. They explained that they needed this fuel for production of plastics but the truth is Neftochim is producing such fuel and should have piled some stocks to last it till an overhaul is underway. So it seems that it is cheaper for the Burgas-based oil refinery to import than to produce. They say they need the fuel to produce plastics but noone can promise it will not be reprocessed for sale on the domestic market. This opportunity is absolutely preposterous as the existing protecting duties on fuel are aimed only at protecting the local monopolist producer, Neftochim. And if under the conditions of inhibiting duties the oil refinery is allowed to import fuel free of duty, something is definitely wrong.
There are identical anomalies with the price of grain and flour. Bread makers prefer to import grain than to buy expensive locally produced flour. Wheat of the previous harvest is catching mould in the warehouses but it can be sold neither at home because of an excessive supply nor abroad because of its high price which is already 50 percent higher than prices on the European markets, not to speak of its low quality and high transport prices.
Identical examples abound - Greek apples and vegetables, Macedonian cabbage, Polish potatoes, Turkish textiles, Danish cheese, Australian kangaroo meat, chicken legs from the United States, yoghurt from Hungary...
Last year saw a trade surplus of 396 million dollars (according to central bank figures). The projections of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are that the trend will persist this year but in 1999-2001 it is expected to reverse with imports exceeding exports.
This means an outflow of foreign exchange from the country and shrinking foreign currency reserve. Under the conditions of a currency board it also means less money and halting the economic growth, or pressure of devaluation.
Experts say that the trade deficit expected in the years ahead will come as a result of the liberalisation of trade with the countries of the European Union (EU) and the pending opening of the CEFTA markets. With the lifting of restrictions in trade in Europe, the domestic market will be flooded by cheaper foreign goods. This is supposed to act as a strong incentive for orienting domestic production as much as possible to the market but the behaviour of producers, traders and the state administration remains essentially anti-market.
The subsidies, writing off of bad debts, protecting purchase prices, tax concessions and the like do not allow Bulgarians producers to get a realistic idea about the needs of the market. In the past, sales were guaranteed, be it on the unpretentious markets of the former Soviet Union and at artificially low prices. The collapse of COMECON brought irreversible changes on the markets. Now about 40 percent of Bulgarias foreign trade involves countries of the EU. It means new requirements for quality and competitive prices.
The projections of the World Bank show that in the years to come exports will increase in absolute terms but their share in the GDP will drop. The explanation is that production will shrink and so will the export of goods making up the bulk of Bulgarian trade abroad. The trend is also observable with tobacco whose export in 1997 dropped by 30 percent. The major hurdle in this business is the difficult Russian market where the competition of powerful Western cigarette manufacturers that have made sizeable investment there, is very strong.
The export of mineral and nitrogen fertilisers, a traditional leader in the list of Bulgarian export, was nearly halved last year. The expensive inputs and high energy consumption keep up the price of this product and it could not withstand the price collapse on international exchanges. For more than a year, deals have become incidental and production facilities are working only to keep the heat up.
Once a major exporter of agricultural produce, Bulgaria now is about to become a major importer. The downward trend started in 1995 and affected all one-time best-sellers: alcohol, cheese, dairy products, oil-bearing seed, fresh fruit and vegetables. What is more, it was then that the country was granted a preferential trade regime in connection with its accession to the EU and the World Trade Organisation.
The mechanisms for regulation of prices and the market applied in the recent years, are also to blame for the inefficiency of production. Farmers enjoyed an elaborate system of subsidies, protective prices, preferential taxes, credits and the like. Since 1995, protective purchase prices have been set for staple agricultural produce including maize, wheat, sugar beet, potato, milk and meat under a Protection of Agricultural Producers Act. Farmers were producing with the only though of staying within the limit of the price guaranteed by the state without making any attempt to optimise expenses. This years will be the first one without protective prices for wheat but the real wheat market is about to collapse. The reason are the chaotic managerial decisions that reached a peak last year. Concerned by the possibility for a grain crisis, the government persistently kept in force a ban on grain exports despite the good harvest and the prescriptions of the IMF and the World Bank. The government imported excessive quantities of grain and bought out the domestic grain harvest at international and even higher prices. This year most producers will go to the market with the good memories from last year awaiting high prices. Some experts say their calculations may be right because they buy the expensive Bulgarian fertilisers and seed, and use fuel that is more expensive that the average European. So it I very likely that exports turn out to be cheaper again. Another option is to sell at a loss which is exactly what will happen to the remainder of last years harvest that will be sold at a loss of $50 per tonne.
Danone Serdika is importing from Hungary to test the market. But they also say that if milk purchase prices continue to rise, making investment here will become meaningless. They also said that the price of Bulgarian milk is rising because production is ineffective.
This is the problem of the whole Bulgarian economy - inefficiency that is making it incompetitive.
Bulgarian farmers are unable to get 10 litres of milk from a cow while their Danish colleagues get 16 to 18 litres. The work they put in it is identical. Low productivity makes products more expensive.
This is in the core of the conflict with importers that have started selling cheaper on the Bulgarian market despite the high transport expenses and duties.
Right now the purchase price for a litre of milk is 25 pfennings, or 250 levs while in Bulgaria it is close to 500 levs. Milk imports here are charged a 40 percent duty, but even with this high rate the Bulgarian product cannot be protected.
So if it is cheaper for Danone to import from Hungary, they should do it. This is the rule of the free market.
Opening up the Bulgarian market is the only way to teach Bulgarian producers a market-oriented behaviour. The problem - with fuel and grain alike - is that the market is not yet liberalised and there is no competition. The Neftochim oil refinery is too comfortable in its position as monopolist and political groupings regularly drain it. When price collapsed late last year in the wake of the Asian economic crisis, instead of liberalising the market the incumbents helped Neftochim keep prices the highest in the region covering up losses from unprofitable deals with private Bulgarian companies.
In a desire to recover production last year, the state guaranteed the purchase of grain at unreasonably high prices from the State Fund for Reconstruction and Development. Prices on international markets fell and it was taxpayers who had to pay for the loss. Liberalising the market is the only way to stop the state and economic groupings from plundering the monopolists and to protect the interests of taxpayers and consumers.
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| 15/08/2003 06:18 |
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| Traditional Bulgarian Instruments and Music |
Musical instruments have been part of Bulgarian life since ancient times. Many of the tales we have were originally sung and accompanied by different instruments. All sorts of tools and simple objects that could produce sounds were used as musical instruments ( spoons, tongs, small bells, clappers, bird call whistles, etc. ). As lifestyles evolved over the centuries, musical taste and instruments also developed along with them. The older rudimentary instruments were replaced by improved models. Many of those are typical not only for Bulgaria but for the Balkan Peninsula as a whole.
Bulgarians play musical instruments on a variety of occasions: in taverns, at dinner, for weddings, at parties and they used to sing even when they worked the fields. This diversity of use required a diversity of instruments. Some instruments are very old while others were brought from foreign countries, many were imported much later, some were taken from the Turks or the Greeks.
Typically Bulgarian instruments include the caval ( an end-blown flute ), the duduk ( whistle ), the gaïda ( which is a kind of a bagpipe but differs from the Greek and Scottish one ), the gadulka and the gusla ( kinds of rebecs or bowed stringed instruments, the last one probably came from Russia ); the tupan ( double-headed cylindrical drum ) and the tarambuke.
These instruments are hand-made by artisans or the musicians themselves and reflect regional characteristics. Instruments may have different names depending on the region but they are also painted ddifferently or may have a different form according to the region.
The Tambura ( you have probably come upon this in one of the stories I published ) is a controversial term as it comes to translation because it is a different instrument depending on the region. Some say that it is just like the tarambuke which is an instrument with a single vibrating body. Musicians obtain sounds from it by hitting it with both their palms and fingers. Such an intrument exist in the Far East. The tarambuke is made of a long narrow earthenware cask shaped like a bottomless vase. A skin is stretched over its largest opening and the smaller opening is left open. The musician holds the instrument under the left arm or between the knees. The sound is produced with the fingers and emphasises the rhythm. That is why it was often used when tales were sung. Its sound differs a lor from other instruments of the sort because it is very soft and tender.
But the tambura is in some regions a folk instrument with supposedly Turkish or Persian-Arab origin, and then, it is called "taNbura". In this variation it is found mainly in the south east of Bulgaria and in the mountains. The tanbura looks like a lute with a body made of sycamore or pear wood. The instrument has a long neck with a straight fingerboard and keys to adjust the string tension. The number of frets can vary between 12 and 18. They are placed all along the keyboard and are made of sheep skin or linen thread. The tanbura strings are metal, wrapped with copper thread that makes the tone soft and tender. Bulgarian tanbura come in different sizes, with different numbers of strings, in different tunings and are played in various positions. Today, the best known tanbura has 8 strings and 18 frets.
In the past, only men played the tanbura to accompany their songs. In modern orchestras and groups, the tanbura most often plays harmony or rhythm. Nonetheless, accomplished musicians can play solos of remarkable technique and virtuosity.
The Gaida ( bagpipe ) is one of the most characteristic folk instruments of Bulgaria. It was traditionally the instrument of the shepherds and that is why it is often heard solo or accompanied by a large drum. Like all Bulgarian folk instruments there are many regional variations with distinctive styles of detail and ornament. All share a common form: white kidskin bag, blowpipe, drone and chanter. The pipes of the eastern regions of Thrace and Dobrudja are usually high-pitched, while those of western Shope region tend to be lower. In the south Bulgarian Rhodope mountain region they are extremely deep-pitched with huge goatskin bags. These are often played in pairs or trios and sometimes in large groups. There is one ensemble in that area called "Sto Gaidi", which translates as "A Hundred Bagpipes". The standard instrument today is an outfit consisting of three chanters and two drones, giving the player capacity to perform music of all regions. Pipes are traditionally richly decorated with metal. The kaba-gaida of south Bulgaria is a huge instrument. Its single drone is almost four feet long. It has a very deep tone.
The kaval, a Bulgarian or Balkan end-blown flute is also a common shepherds instrument played in orchestras and as an accompaniment to singing. It is universally popular in Bulgaria. Playing techniques vary throughout the country. The caval is carved in wood, sometimes dogwood, cherry, maple or plum but mainly of yew. The basic tone depends on the dimensions of the instrument. You can see both small cavals ( ordinary ) and large cavals (up to one meter in length) in Bulgaria. The instrument has a wide range of light, pleasant and full tones in the medium register and clear and thin tones in the upper register.
The caval harmonizes well with the gadulka, gaïda and tanbura and performs a basic role in folk orchestras. In modern times, the caval has found a new significance. By improving their playing technique, some musicians have succeeded in using the caval to interpret jazz music and in creating duets with the human voice. Recently, composers have written new symphonic works for caval and orchestra.
You may listen to Bulgarian folk music on the Internet. Check the following websites for more details and information. CDs may also be purchased from some Bulgarian sites.
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| 14/07/2003 11:02 |
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