Recently, Vietnamese Ambassador to Bulgaria Nguyen Thi Minh Nguyet held a working session with Tsvetan Simeonov, President of the Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI), to discuss directions for boosting bilateral ties.

At the meeting, Simeonov emphasized Vietnam’s strategic importance as a key partner in Southeast Asia, and proposed expanding business cooperation in priority areas such as trade, technology, and two-way investment.

Bulgaria holds a strategic geographic position, serving as a gateway between Europe and Asia, as well as the Middle East and Africa. It plays a central role in facilitating transcontinental trade routes. Notably, beginning January 1, 2025, Bulgaria officially became a full member of the Schengen zone,  greatly facilitating the transport of goods and services, as well as the movement of people across the European Union (EU).

This development presents a valuable opportunity for Vietnamese enterprises to access European markets more quickly and reduce logistics costs.

In parallel, Bulgaria is stepping up infrastructure upgrades in transportation, seaports, energy, and telecommunications, contributing to a more transparent, competitive, and investor-friendly environment.

Several sectors in which Bulgaria has established strengths offer promising prospects for Vietnam to enhance linkages, including information technology, software, electronics, energy and the environment, startups and innovation, agriculture and food processing, logistics, and goods transshipment. Bulgarian partners have expressed readiness to cooperation on developing logistics infrastructure to facilitate the transportation of Vietnamese goods to European markets via Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

As part of her working visit, Ambassador Nguyen Thi Minh Nguyet also met with  Plamen Panchev, CEO at the Trakia Economic Zone (TEZ), the largest industrial complex in Bulgaria, covering over 10 million square meters across six key industrial zones.

TEZ is currently seeking investment in areas such as manufacturing, high technology, renewable energy, logistics, human resource development and training, and green technology research and development, including solar energy, green hydrogen, and biomethane.

The complex enjoys one of the EU’s most favorable tax policies, with a corporate income tax rate of just 10%, and is destined to become the first carbon-neutral industrial zone in Europe. As such, it represents an attractive destination for Vietnamese businesses pursuing long-term and sustainable investment strategies.

Looking ahead, the Vietnamese Embassy in Bulgaria will coordinate with BCCI to organize the Vietnam–Bulgaria Economic Cooperation Forum in the capital, Sofia on July 3. The forum is expected to draw around 50 Bulgarian companies and 20 Vietnamese enterprises attending in person, along with approximately 30 associations and companies participating online. This will be a practical event to further augment economic cooperation between the two countries in the time ahead.

Source: VOV