Disagreement on how to face the crisis
The plans were made public amid news of further job cuts in various sectors, of the economic crisis worldwide having a negative impact on Bulgaria's tourism and real estate sectors - on which it has relied heavily for foreign investment - and of fresh warnings that foreign direct investment in the country will shrink in 2009.
The Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry has proposed that a special fund be set up, using public money, to pay minimum wage to qualified workers made redundant.
The Bulgarian Industrial Association (BIA), which has been strident in a series of warnings that official government projections underestimate job losses, said that redundancies should be referred to a commercial partnership which would undertake to provide skills training for people who had been laid off. Those undergoing training should be paid minimum wage while doing so, the association said. People refusing to take part in the training scheme should be denied unemployment benefits, the BIA said.
The Confederation of Independent Trade Unions of Bulgaria (CITUB) has proposed measures to encourage domestic demand to compensate for the reduced influx of foreign capital.
And the Confederation of Employers and Industrialists in Bulgaria (CEIBG) has released a plan with 14 major recommendations. CEIBG called for a non-partisan political consensus on implementing structural reforms and combating organized crime, so as to encourage the EU to unblock the funds that it has denied Bulgaria because of the country's shortcomings in these areas.
Clive Leviev-Sawyer
This is an edited version of an article originally published in The Sofia Echo
