Inappropriate and incompetent administration, poor and unstable legislation, and lack of workforce are the main problems faced by companies operating in the service and commerce sector. This was made clear today, 8 November 2018, at a meeting held in BIA with the leaders of 15 member branch organizations.
Particularly acute were the speeches by the participants regarding the lack of normal communication with the state administration. We can now talk about the manners of not responding to letters, delaying files, not keeping up with administrative deadlines. Criticism was also expressed towards the selection of employees in the administration – there is general incompetence and illiteracy.
All participants in the meeting expressed their willingness and readiness to engage with expertise at the earliest stages of preparing regulatory changes to ensure the stability of legislation and a better business environment. In this sense, it was regrettably found that the most frequent changes are made without the necessary effective consultation and impact assessment, without taking into account the objective circumstances and mechanisms of functioning of the business in one or another economic sphere, and this leads to regulatory chaos, to the impossibility of fulfilling imputed obligations and, ultimately, to the need for even more amendments to the regulations. The administration often does not have the necessary competencies to create new regulations, especially in new industries such as e-commerce, facility management, etc., where there is a need for entirely new legislation. In this regard, the representatives of the sectors concerned are ready to cooperate with expertise so that the new regulations are of better quality and hence more durable and contributing rather than impeding the development of business.
Another big problem is the refusal of the state to effectively deal with the high level of gray economy that generates unfair competition and bad business environment. Of all the actions against the shadow economy, the white business suffered in the end, the participants in the meeting were unanimous.
Among the problems posed today was the one with the “household waste” tax. Disagreement was expressed with the intention to postpone the two-year delay of the entry into force of the “polluter pays” principle and the continued charging of the tax on the basis of the asset’s book value or the tax assessment of the property.
Representatives of sectoral organizations are in favor of more opportunities for self-regulation of businesses, incl. to launch a discussion on the Sectoral Organizations Act. The issue of the obsolete legal framework of labor relations was also raised, and the need for a new Labor Code in line with the current economic conditions.
In the course of the conversation, two of the European funded projects that BIA has developed in recent years - MyCompetence and EduLab - in which the sectoral organizations have a large contribution and participation, have been identified as particularly useful for the development and management of human resources.
On the part of BIA, today’s meeting was attended by Executive President Radosvet Radev, Vice Presidents Dimiter Brankov, Kamen Kolev and Petar Denev, General Secretary Dobri Mitrev and directors of centers. The participating branch organizations were: Association for Training in Transport, Bulgarian Association of Optometrists, Industrial Cluster Security, Bulgarian Tourist Chamber, Association of Dental Dealers in Bulgaria, Bulgarian E-commerce Association, Association for Ecological Engineering, National Association for Health and Safety at Work, Association of the Accountants and the Accounting Companies, Bulgarian Cleaning Association, Bulgarian Chamber for Protection and Security, Bulgarian Facility Management Association, National Branch Union “Supervision аnd Maintenance оf Elevators, Lifts аnd Escalators”, National Organization of Customs Agents and Union of Auto Repair Centers.
This is the fourth such meeting of BIA’s management, having been held beforehand with organizations from the production sectors of the economy, the food and beverage industry and the field of education and science. During the previous meetings, similar problems were outlined, over which BIA is committed to working actively with the support and expert assistance of the branch organizations.
“I appreciate your every word, spoken today, I appreciate your support and partnership. The state administration forgets that it is not our chief, but it works, thanks to our labor, our taxes. The generosity of the budget is possible precisely because of the efforts of the employers, so we cannot fail to account with the dissatisfaction that the budget is aggressive to the business and generous to everyone else,” Radosvet Radev, Executive President of BIA, said at the end of today’s meeting. He undertook that BIA will continue to pursue its line of objectivity and react promptly to established problems in the area of rulemaking and bad administrative practices.
