Russia is banning imports of a number of Bulgarian goods, the Kremlin announced. The restrictions apply on the imports of agricultural products, raw materials and supplies from countries that have themselves imposed sanctions on Russia, thus including Bulgaria as well.
The restrictions will be valid for one year, the decree signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in early September says, as the Kremlin announced on its official website.
According to the Russian edition of “Vedomosti” the ban will apply on meat, cheese and dairy products. According to the website russian.rt.com, the ban will hit only the goods of the more expensive end of the market and will not apply to wine and baby food.
Based on statistics for the first five months of the year, Bulgarian exports to Russia amounted to about BGN 411.4 million. The largest share was taken by medicines, but Bulgarian wines were also in the TOP 10.
At the same time Russian and Bulgarian media reports that Russians lowered down their interest in Bulgarian real estate as well. They are much less interested in Bulgarian property than say a year ago, while interest have lowered down from 30 to 50%. Amount of Russians trying to sell their Bulgarian residencies increased, while realtors confirming more and more Russian citizen canceling their scheduled appointments to view flats and villas.
In the spring realtors did not want to believe that it is a sustainable trend. The reason given was called to discuss the possibility of tightening the EU visa regime for Russians because of the conflict in Ukraine and imposed sanctions. Another reason may be the travel ban for Russian officials the power unit in the NATO countries. It is believed that around 50% of buyers of Bulgarian property are mid-level Russian officials, and many of them are prosecutors, the Interior Ministry, customs officers and officials from other similar structures.
Perhaps the “ban on security forces” was the last straw, which fill up the cup of Russian investors. But the reasons that Bulgaria could lose Russian money, in our opinion, much more. Boom, which lasted for a decade, it seems, ran into a wall of red tape, lack of professionalism, inadequate legislation, the difference in mentality.
One of the good examples is the local fight of international community of neighbors with their householding organization in the city of Balchik. They have wrote an open letter to local authorities, asking to protect their legal rights, estimate and justify the legality of actions of people and organizations attempting to get control over their dwellings in order to make profit of it.
The letter says:
Our house was built up and registered as a common building, not a “Complex” (Act 16) in 2005. This affected the majority of our residents to choose our house among the others.
Our builder, “Granit-91”, however, joined the huddle with one of the investors “Chemomorsky project” to mislead the owners and turn our house into a ‘’Complex”.
According to the documentation (Act 16 and the Architectural Plat) our house has a small (33 square meters) open swimming-pool. “Granit-91” and “Chemomorsky project” own it.
We share our property with the landlords (“Chemomorsky Project” and “Granit-91”). They still own several apartments in the house for sale.
Since the very beginning one of our investors, Kercheva M. has been trying to turn our house into a “Complex” making herself and her other company “Mako-06” the maintaining company with a 10€ Tax per square meter from each Owner.
None of our landlords ever called any General Meetings of Owners and no one ever elected or appointed “Mako-06” the Maintaining company.
Almost all the residents have been persuaded to sign the contract with “Mako-06” and this company became a self-appointed Maintaining company of the house collecting a lot of money in exchange of a very poor service.
In the end of 2013 the Owners have broken their contracts with Mako-06 and organized the first official Meeting of Owners where The Manager, The Cashier and The Controller of the house have been elected and appointed. All the procedure was performed in accordance with the Bulgarian Law, We made this official and the Managing Group was registered at the local Authority.
At the second Meeting there have been established the new maintaining Tax, and some other important decisions have been made about the house and the pool.
The whole new System began to work, keeping everyone satisfied except for the Landlords.
“Granit-91” aid “Chemomorsky project” still ignore the decisions of our meetings, they do not participate in our payments, they both do not respect the rules we established and try their best to sabotage the New Order in the house misleading the new owners.
The landlords stopped cleaning the pool and turned it into a dangerous and anti-hygienic puddle full of frogs and Mosquitos. 2500 levas has been demanded by them to rent it for the period of 3 months.
In spite of the fact that the pool was promised to the owners as a part of their apartments no one has the right to use it now and H takes a lot of strength to make them take elementary safety measures about it. Our official Manager and we ail can’t make our landlords respect our decisions and cooperate.
As a reaction to our administrative measures towards the swimming-pool and taking an advantage of the fact that “Chemomorsky project” still has 21 % of votes, Kercheva initiated the “urgent” Meeting in order to change the current Manager and the order established by the residents in the house.
Another extraordinary meeting scheduled on Sep, 16 2014, so before that time Balchik authorities will have to intrude into this conflict to settle it out.