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The Supervisory Board of the Bulgarian Development Bank (BDB) will be filled with at least two more people in order to improve its work, Minister of Innovation and Growth Alexander Pulev told journalists today

Alexander Pulev was born on February 5, 1981 in Plovdiv.

He has a master's degree in finance at Oxford University at the beginning of a meeting with the directors of the Bulgarian Stock Exchange (BSE).

Now the bank is not working optimally and efficiently.

The main gaps are related to the way of budgeting, defining the strategic vision and the accompanying control, said Pulev.

The victim is small and medium-sized businesses - the backbone of our economy, he said.

The Bulgarian Development Bank has laid down a plan to distribute loans for BGN 342 million to small and medium-sized companies by the end of the year.

The implementation is catastrophic - until the end of August, the BBR has allocated only BGN 60 million, said Alexander Pulev

Alexander Pulev was born on February 5, 1981 in Plovdiv.

He holds an MA in Finance from Oxford.

There is no justification, annual budget and annual strategy for the set goal of BGN 342 million.

I spoke with the three members of the supervisory board and the three members of the management board of BBR and I received 6 different figures for the bank's annual goal, Pulev pointed out.

The planned potential new credits do not indicate that the target can be met.

We understand that the target of BGN 342 million has now been reduced by half, that is, the bank had no idea what they were setting as a target for implementation at the beginning of the year, noted the minister.

We reduced the salaries of members of the Supervisory Board five times - to market levels.

However, I want the introduction of good practices in the banking industry.

If the National Assembly has problems with the bank's Board of Directors, they should replace them, but they cannot do micro management - these are people hired by them, said Pulev.

The average amount of credit exposure to motor vehicles of BBR is now BGN 350,000 with a limit of BGN 5 million.

People from the bank come and want us to increase the limit from BGN 5 to 10 million, but this will definitely not happen.

I am waiting for a strategy from BBR to increase the average size of the loan in order to bring this 5 million BGN closer.

This is important for the annual goals of BGN 342 million.

With this average amount of credit, BBR will grant 1,000 credits per year or four credits per day, and this is science fiction, against the background of the bank's capacity and the lack of a branch network, said Pulev.

The other two solutions are obvious for people who want to do clean and transparent things, the minister pointed out.

Minister Pulev will meet with the BSE Board of Directors regarding the work of the BSE

These solutions are: First - expanding the product range with a focus on co-financing when there is a leading international institution.

We are talking about large international banks that manage risk qualitatively.

Then BBR will give loans, talking about syndicated structures and others, noted Pulev.

We do not push private capital, but supplement it in riskier projects, he assured.

Second - BBR will cooperate with the Bulgarian Stock Exchange by directing part of the lending and investment portfolio to the public markets.

Thus, loans and investments will be public and easily accessible, said Minister Pulev, quoted by BTA.

For the first time, the Minister of Growth and Innovation is a guest of the Bulgarian Stock Exchange, said its executive director Manyu Moravenov.  

The moment is very suitable for cooperation with BBR, because there is already a Beem market on the stock exchange, just for small and medium-sized enterprises.

There have already been nine successful initial public offerings (IPOs) there and, according to our information, there are at least 20 companies planning to go public, Moravenov said.

However, the crisis has made companies quite cautious and the institutional support we are giving them will help a lot.

We are talking about interest in the order of BGN 300 million within one year.

We propose an investment structure sponsored initially by BDB to attract additional resource from institutional investors.

This resource will be used for the IPO and for bond loans, as we expect significant interest in bond issues due to an increase in interest rates, said Moravenov.

Alexander Pulev