Greek SMEs heading to Bulgaria ‘in droves’ – report
Thousands of Greek small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are looking for the road to financial recovery in Bulgaria, and about 6000 companies had relocated from Greece to Bulgaria, Athens-based eKathimerini said.
The trend of Greek businesses moving to Bulgaria had already begun before the financial and economic crisis but recent months had seen a fresh spurt of interest, the report said, quoted on June 12 2012 by Bulgarian news agency Focus.
“The first wave of Greek companies moving their headquarters to Bulgaria came in 2006, when it became a member of the European Union, and they were mostly large construction and textile firms,” Alexandros Adamidis, a lawyer who heads a company that specialises in such transfers, told Kathimerini.
In contrast to the widespread belief that those first businesses moved in order to reduce operating costs, Adamidis said their motives were more about increasing profits, with Greek construction firms today leading the market in large-scale infrastructure projects in Bulgaria.
In 2008, the list of businesses relocating to Bulgaria grew with the addition of services, e-commerce and manufacturing. In January of that same year, when the global financial crisis exploded, plastics factories, photovoltaic panel producers, telecoms, medical equipment manufacturers, printers, security systems operators, food manufacturers and even film production companies began joining the club of emigres.
(Photo: Vera Reis/sxc.hu)
