It takes three months if a company based in Bulgaria wants to hire a foreign worker, according to Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Ivailo Kalfin.
Against a background of such problems and the shortcomings on Bulgarias labour market, the Government wants to come up with a strategy to deal with the negative trends.
This country will soon face the need to import qualified labour from abroad, Kalfin told representatives of the Confederation of Employers and Industrialists in Bulgaria (CEIB) on September 19. To this end, Bulgaria had to decide from which countries it wanted to import labour. The greatest desire to work in Bulgaria has been registered among Turkish workers, Kalfin said.
The idea of attracting and hiring foreign workers is not new to Bulgaria. As The Sofia Echo reported in November 2006, the Bulgarian Industrial Association (BIA) sent an open letter to the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy saying that Bulgaria should introduce quotas for foreign workers in occupations where there were labour shortages. At the time, the BIA called for the restrictions in the Foreigners Act to be dropped, meaning that jobs would be open to foreigners even if there were Bulgarian applicants. BIA listed the sectors in which there was an urgent need for qualified labour: tourism, energy, metallurgy and information technology. Almost a year later, Kalfin gave a similar example. The Maritsa Iztok thermal power plant (near Stara Zagora) is in desperate need of 400 additional welders, Kalfin told CEIB. He said that Turkey was ready to help fill the gap. However we would like first to hire Bulgarian labour as opposed to looking abroad, Kalfin said. This idea, in fact, was the main focus of the strategy to attract foreign workers. On September 19, Kalfin revealed some of the future strategy being worked out by the Government. The strategy, he said, would be developed within a few weeks and the main focus would be on attracting foreigners of Bulgarian origin.
The aim is to give Bulgarians abroad information about the labour market and vacant jobs in Bulgaria. We shall try to change the system of attracting foreign citizens of Bulgarian origin to this country. The procedure for issuing these people Bulgarian passports is currently quite cumbersome, but neither should it be too easy, Kalfin said. There are labour attaches operating in four countries where there is a new Bulgarian diaspora and who provide information about job opportunities in Bulgaria.
There were close to 55 000 foreigners permanently resident in Bulgaria, Kalfin said. About 15 000 of them had labour contracts. Most were Turkish citizens and the smallest number was 10 Australians.
Five days after Kalfins statements, a World Bank report on Bulgarias productivity challenges said that Bulgaria should put the emphasis on labour market development, human resources development, and a system for research and development activity. Bulgaria would have to increase its productivity growth to five per cent a year if the country wanted to reach the income levels of other EU members, the report said. More than 400 000 jobs had been created since 2002 and unemployment had decreased to less than seven per cent, the report said. The same data came from the state Employment Agency. At a round table at the Cabinet offices on September 24, Anand Seth, World Bank director for South Central Europe, said that the report indicated that high growth was possible in future. That would mean high productivity growth to compensate for the expected decrease in the labour force, he said.
On September 18, the Employment Agency said that in August unemployed people registered at job centres totalled 259 310, 64 433 fewer than a year earlier and 9136 fewer than in July. Unemployment dropped in all of the countrys 28 administrative regions except Gabrovo. The levels in nine regions remained below the national average and in 18 regions it was above the average. Job centres offered 20 177 jobs in August, 6811 more than in July. The labour market offered 12 393 positions, including 8939 in the private sector. A total of 3780 jobs were made available under subsidised programmes. A total of 4103 people took part in occupational training courses that month. Job centres held 290 such courses for unemployed people and 30 courses for employed people.
