For a sixth consecutive year, the electrical industry is the largest Bulgarian exporter, the Bulgarian Association of Electrical Enginering and Electronics (BASEL) said, citing Eurostat data. Despite the strong performance of the sector, challenges remain and the biggest one is the shortage of human resources, Association officials said at a meeting with the press earlier in February.
By the end of 2021, exports by the electrical industry were worth EUR 3.6 billion and held the first place with a share of 10.5% of Bulgaria's total exports. The leading products are electrical apparatuses; cables for cars; electronic integrated circuits; refrigerators; electric panels; transformers; batteries; and boilers. Since 2007, there has been more than a threefold increase in production volumes, and in 2020 the industry's turnover was estimated at EUR 3.8 billion, or about 11% of the entire Bulgarian manufacturing industry.
"This is a sector with a dynamic portfolio and a major contribution to Bulgaria's technological progress," said BASEL Executive Director Orlin Dimitrov. The production and repair of electronic appliances and electrical equipment in Bulgaria includes about 1,300 companies with some 55,000 employees, and foreign investors such as Schneider Electric, Festo, Siemens, ABB, Liebherr, Melexis and Sensata, to mention but a few, contribute to the dynamic development of the industry in Bulgaria.
Despite the good performance of the sector, however, challenges remain. The most serious of these is the shortage of human resources and what BASEL sees as distortion of the labour market, especially by state-owned enterprises. According to BASEL Chairman Dimitar Beleliev, the staffing problem is at all levels and there is a shortage of both mid-level technical staff and trained engineers. One solution is for the state to ease procedures for hiring people from other nationalities, and for the education system to educate and train the personnel that business needs.
The second problem is unclear pricing of electricity which does not allow companies to plan their costs.
The third challenge is in solar energy production. BASEL believes that the state should incentivize the construction of photovoltaic systems at the point of energy consumption - not large plants in remote locations, which is the current practice. Solar plants should be on the roofs of residential, industrial, commercial premises. The procedure should be simplified and the connection to the power grid should be done online, with a few clicks, as it is done in the advanced European countries, BASEL said.
BASEL was founded in 1994 and is the nationally representative organization of the electrical and electronics industry. It brings together 67 Bulgarian and foreign companies in manufacturing, engineering, trade, consulting and R&D. The BASEL members employ about 10,000 people and have a total annual turnover of about BGN 1 billion.