On 15 April SZ REDA-Stara Zagora hosted the seminar “Opportunities for entrepreneurship in Stara Zagora”. The seminar was moderated by Dr. Rumyana Grozeva, coordinating partner of ECIH Zagore, and the speakers were Levon Khampartsumyan – banker, financier, Ognyan Zlatev from the European Commission, Rositsa Raykova from the Department of Investment, Energy Efficiency and Green Transition in Stara Zagora Municipality, Georgi Parvanov, Executive Director of CTeam, Assoc. Kosyo Stoychev from Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Maria Zhekova, Manager of ATE Plast Ltd, Dinko Dinev, Director of Information Technologies at eDynamix.
During the seminar the important questions were raised about the state of entrepreneurship in Stara Zagora, in view of the trends, the workforce and the coming changes in the affected areas. Rositsa Raykova presented to the participants the concept of a business incubator, which is to be implemented through a project funded with technical assistance from the European Commission, and fully tailored to the specific needs and realities of Stara Zagora. Funding under the Just Transition Fund is expected to enable the idea to be put into practice. Ognian Zlatev shared the experience of Croatia with the introduction of the euro in view of the entrepreneurial ecosystem and the challenges that this change brings.
Georgi Parvanov, Executive Director of CTeam, spoke about how businesses and entrepreneurs in Stara Zagora need to be proactive, follow trends and adapt to new realities in order to remain competitive and ensure sustainable development of the regional economy. The labour market is at a decisive crossroads – not only because of the rapid digitalisation and the penetration of artificial intelligence, but also against the backdrop of green transformation. For traditional coal regions, which decades ago built their economies around fossil fuels, this moment is even more crucial. Stara Zagora faces serious challenges, but also promising opportunities.
Levon Khampartsumian gave his insight into the shortcomings of the entrepreneurial environment – an educated and skilled workforce, a positive attitude in society towards entrepreneurs, who in most cases are seen as exploiters, heavy administrative procedures. The main thing is also to have a predictable environment, because there are successful economies with high taxes, but also unsuccessful economies with low taxes. We need to be a successful economy, which means a predictable environment for doing business. When you can predict the things that happen in the environment – starting from organisation, labour relations, taxes, administrative procedures, controls and all these things – when they are well-functioning, predictable, doing business is a song. When they’re not well organized and they’re inefficient, they can be corrupt, the environment becomes unpleasant regardless of the factors, like low taxes, good climate and other factors that attract people.
