Daily Times, Pakistan - Wednesday, December 26, 2007.

SOFIA: Every day ex-communist Bulgaria proudly announces yet another foreign investment project for a new shopping mall, a golf course or a residential complex.

The real estate boom has created new jobs and the government boasts an economic growth of 6 percent a year. But investing in construction alone cannot bring long-term prosperity to the poorest European Union member.

Bulgaria’s problems, analysts say, include underinvestment in infrastructure and manufacturing, a large grey economy, eroding education, growing consumer indebtedness, crippling inflation and a ballooning current account deficit at a time of global credit jitters.

They say the Balkan country faces troubled times ahead if it does not move quickly to address the looming economic risks.

“We are seeing building of shopping malls and investment in real estate but not in product-generating sectors that can boost potential for the future. That is certainly a problem,” said Ivailo Vesselinov, senior economist at Dresdner Kleinwort.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) said the investment pattern was worrying and Bulgaria was likely to feel a negative impact in the medium term.

“There should be more efforts in dealing with issues like human capital, education, the brain drain,” EBRD’s economist Fabrizio Coricelli said.

Out of a total of 4.36 billion euros in foreign direct investment attracted last year, nearly 3.2 billion went into real estate and construction, financial services and trade. Manufacturing received just 804 million euros.

The World Bank warned recently that Bulgaria would never reach EU income levels if its labour productivity continues to rise by only 2 percent a year.

The share of services — banking, trade and real estate in particular — now makes over half of the country’s annual economic output, while industry’s share stays roughly unchanged at around 30 percent and agriculture has shrunk threefold.

With global borrowing conditions getting tighter, analysts expect the fast pace of property price growth in post-communist Europe — at an average annual of 20 percent — to slow down and investment to moderate.

A decline in foreign capital flows would hurt Bulgaria, which relies entirely on foreign direct investment to cover a yawning current account gap of over 20 percent of GDP this year, driven by surging imports. “The credit crisis will not end tomorrow...over the years there will be a negative impact on Bulgaria,” said Daniel Gros of the Brussels-based Centre for European Policy Studies.

Another headache is racing inflation, which hit an annual 12.6 percent in November.

(Reuters)