The Bulgarian Industry: The State, Development and Prospects of Industrial Policy (original) (raw)

Strategy for the Renaissance of Bulgarian Industry: Policy Planning vs Implementing Measures

EKONOMIA XXI WIEKU

A wide range of strategic documents outlines the "road map" of development of the existing industry to "Industry 4.0" in Bulgaria. Despite efforts at European and national level, the implementation of the "road map" for the reindustrialization of the economy meets a basic problem of how to plan without evolution to achieve a revolution in the industry. As a result of the realization of this problem, there is an absence of a clear European or national plan to implement the "revival of industry" with the available economic, social, and political contexts, but at the same time, a realization of short-term plans is observed, aimed primarily at using investment measures to change the industry from the "inside". This report emphasizes the main challenges facing a strategic plan for the reindustrialization of the Bulgarian economy as well as structurally addresses the following questions: 1. What are the Bulgarian strategic and operational documents related to the implementation of a common European plan for revival of the industry to "Industry 4.0"? 2. What short-term measures should be implemented as the first steps in Bulgaria in this direction? Summary and conclusions end the article.

Structural Changes in the Industry of the European Union and Bulgaria. Evolution and Future Challenges after the Crisis

Journal of Global Economics, 2015

The present paper provides new insights into the transformation process of the EU industry which remains the most important sector of EU economies, in spite of its decreasing share in EU GDP and the loss of jobs in many industrial sectors. During the last 15 years, the structural changes were induced by various factors, including the so-called "servitisation of manufacturing", outsourcing and delocalization of production, especially in labour intensive industries, implementation of new technologies and more recently the effects of the world financial and economic crisis. The crisis has changed expectations regarding the EU industry development both at national and EU level and new questions arise about the necessity of structural changes in manufacturing, based on higher competition. Consequently, taking into consideration all these challenges, the main goal of our paper is to reveal the stance, the development, and the priorities of the EU industry. After a short introduc...

INDUSTRIAL GROWTH – AN OBJECTIVE NECESSITY FOR THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF BULGARIA

A number of empirical studies have acknowledged the special properties of manufacturing as an engine of growth such as: dynamic economies of scale in manufacturing; strong backward and forward linkages between manufacturing and other sectors of the domestic economy; strong properties of learning-by-doing; innovation and technological progress; and the importance of manufacturing for the balance of payments. Nowadays many developed countries (the USA, the UK, France, etc.) are pursuing reindustrialization as they are aware of the costs of deindustrialization: external deficits and indebtedness; lowering of the skill level of jobs; decline in potential growth. The paper looks at the process of deindustrialization which Bulgaria underwent during the economic transformation and the current state of the country’s industrial competitiveness. It is argued that reindustrialization is an objective necessity for the needed sustainable catching up development and has to be fostered by a proper industrial strategy.

Industrial policy under conditions of EU membership – the case of Bulgaria

In the European Union industrial policy is pursued at two levels – supranational and national. No matter that the EU has competence only to carry out actions to support, coordinate or supplement the actions of the Member States, it exerts a significant influence on their industrial policies. On one hand the EU has ample constraining powers on the policy space that the New Member States may use to foster economic catching up, but on the other hand it provides financial support through the Structural funds, fosters trade openness, increased flow of foreign direct investment, improved legal and institutional framework. Recognizing the importance of industrial competitiveness, the European Commission launched in 2010 an ambitious new industrial policy as part of the Europe 2020 strategy that gives a clear signal for more active industrial policies on a national level as well. The paper looks at the changes in the EU stance towards industrial policy and the challenges in front of the EU poorest Member State Bulgaria in its efforts to achieve structural transformation and technological upgrading of its economy.

Post-crisis performance of Bulgarian machinery industry

Proceedings of the Third International Economic Symposium (IES 2018), 2019

The Global Recession influenced negatively the Bulgarian machine building, which is an industry with high export orientation largely dependent on foreign markets for selling its products. The aim of the paper is to review what changes have happened in the last 10 years in Bulgaria's machinery branch that, being technology and capital intensive industry producing high value added and having good conditions for innovative development, is identified for support by various state's agencies and strategies. Various indicators on output, turnover, investment, employment, exports, imports, etc. and their dynamics over the last decade have been analyzed.

Bulgaria's Integration Into The Pan-European Economy And Industrial Restructuring

Policy Research Working Papers, 2006

This paper looks at Bulgaria's industrial restructuring through the lenses of its evolving specialization in international division of labor and integration into international markets with a special emphasis on EU markets. Its major findings can be summarized as follows: (i) Developments in Bulgaria's exports, its major drivers and factor content, during the 'second transition' following the 1996 crisis have become reminiscent of developments in the early 1990s in European transition economies that have stayed the reform course. (ii) Evolution of Bulgaria's total exports in terms of factor intensities before the 'second transformational' recession was a testimony to aborted economic reforms. It not only defied expectations derived from the experience of CEEC-10 economies and its production factor endowments but also dramatically increased the cost of adjustment to market conditions for the economy as a whole. (iii) Exports of unskilled labor intensive products continue towering over other exports even during the current expansionary phase. The composition of top performers in EU markets indicates, however, the shift toward natural resource and capital intensive products. Bulgaria's export offer in EU markets has budged toward more processed goods, mostly products of electro-engineering sectors. Subsequently, Bulgarian producers have made some strides in information communication technology products and automotive parts. Trade in parts and engineering products has also displayed strong growth. The returns usually associated with liberal reforms, i.e., gains in competitiveness combined with a shift toward products in line with the country's endowments in production factors began to surface only recently. In contrast to the period preceding the second transformational recession, gains in competitiveness derive from corporate and industrial restructuring and not from subsidies.

Contemporary Trends in the Development of Industry in the World and Serbia

8th International Conference "Economics and Management-Based on New Technologies" EMoNT-2018 25-28 June 2018, Vrnjačka Banja, Serbia, pp. 86–93., 2018

The authors offer a view on the current state of industry and contemporary tendencies in its development in Serbia and the world. Particularly, this academic paper analyzes the state of Serbian industry, which collapsed at the beginning of the last decade of the 20th century, after having gone through three waves of industrialization. Serbian economy and industry have not recovered from deindustrialization even after two decades of unsteady development in the current century. Lastly, it presents some possibilities to revitalize the industry and achieve its harmonious development.

Industry 4.0 – Analysis of the Industry Sectors in Czech Republic and Slovakia

EDAMBA 2021 : COVID-19 Recovery: The Need for Speed : Conference Proceedings

Industry 4.0 has become very popular topic in recent years for a lot of people, especially economists, technicians but also teachers. All of them are trying to find out how to implement the ideas of Industry 4.0 in their field, how to develop them and what impact the Industry 4.0 would have. A lot of them are worried about radical changes connected with the implementation is ideas of Industry 4.0, as they understand the Industry 4.0 initiative as revolutionary rather than evolutionary change. In the article, there are data from Eurostat for the NACE sectors breakdown from Czech Republic and Slovakia presented as the background for the main idea of not radical change caused by Industry 4.0. The development of chosen economical indexes for the time-period of 1995 till 2018 are analyzed to illustrate the development of the position of human labor and using the machinery in different kinds of sector types. As the aim of the article is to show, that the fear of radical changes connected ...

Industrial dynamics in Bulgaria – the connection between past and future: The case of food and beverage industry

2012

Defining the industrial dynamics is needed to identify the important prerequisites that support the achievement of a sustainable industrial and economic growth. The industrial dynamics could be used as an instrument to analyze future economic behavior. In the paper we step on the basis of existing state of the art. In section one the methodology is presented: designed and used industrial dynamic function and its components. Section 2 focuses on one of the traditional industrial sectors in Bulgaria -Food and beverage production, its state and key characteristics. In Section 3 the implementation of the industrial dynamic function is illustrated to forecast the future development of the Food and Beverage production sector in Bulgaria. On the basis of dataset perspectives for future development of food and beverage development in Bulgaria are analyzed and recommendations for concrete measures are provided.

Changing Role of Industry in the Economy in the V4 Countries

2014

The theme of the article is the changing role of industry in the economy of the countries of the Visegrad Group, further referred to as V4. The goal of the research is to delimit the regularities in terms of changes of the importance of industrial activity in the economy of the region in the conditions of moving from the industrial to post-industrial to information phase of the development and building of a knowledge-based economy. The analysis is based on the NUTS-2 regions of the V4 countries against the general changes in the European Union states, based on selected measurements of industrial potential, i.e. employment and gross value added of industry, as well as indicators of spatial concentration, structure and dynamics in industrial activity, with a special focus on those related to the knowledge-based economy, such as employment in technology and knowledge-intensive sectors. The analysis is dynamic and refers to the years 2000-2012. The research is based on the following met...