The state of the business environment in Bulgaria in 2024 has not changed compared to the previous year 2023, according to the data from the Business Barometer 2024-2025 survey, which was presented at the University of National and World Economy (UNWE) on 9 April.
Some 37% of respondents thought 2024 was better than 2023, said Prof. Galina Mladenova, who was part of the research team.
The head of the study, Prof. Simeon Zhelev quoted data from the survey, according to which 43% of respondents expect the current year 2025 to be better than the last one, 38% are of the opinion that it will be the same and the forecast of 18.8% is 2025 to be worse. Expectations for micro firms are more pessimistic than for small, medium and large firms, said Prof. Zhelev.
Attitudes towards the demand for goods and services and the possibility of hiring quality labour are pessimistic, while they are negative regarding the tax and social security burden, the survey shows.
27 percent of the companies believe that the introduction of the euro will not affect them, 16% do not have an opinion, said Prof. Zhelev. In the case of micro firms, there is an assessment of a slightly negative impact of the introduction of the euro, he added.
Prof. Mladenova explained that the survey shows that according to the business the top issue is the difficulty in finding qualified workforce, the second place is occupied by administrative and bureaucratic barriers and the third is unfair competition.
Difficult access to credit and other financial sources were the least of the problems cited by businesses as obstacles, she said.
The Business Barometer research project is an empirical study funded by the UNWE Research Fund. The data collection methods are an online and offline structured survey with a questionnaire containing 34 questions.