The crisis has its pluses and minuses for the building sector

The building sector was worst hit by the crisis. By now 20 percent of the construction companies have not renewed their registration in the Bulgarian Construction Chamber, by the end of the next year 20 percent more are expected to freeze their activity or to go bankrupt.

That means that we will have 40% less building companies on the market.

This is said in an analysis by Nikolay Mihaylov, president of Trace Group Hold, one of the biggest road building companies in Bulgaria. The document was delivered last week at the annual Economist conference meeting the government with the business.

The crisis is also a sieve for the random players. In the times of the construction boom there were a lot of new developers that were not specialists in the construction but were after the big profits.

Only the real professionals will survive the crisis.

The crisis is one of the factors for an urgent restructuration and optimisation which is the recipee for survival now. This makes the companies more competitive and raises the labour productivity.

Another result of the crisis is the expected payment of the state to the building companies of about BGN 800m of late payments.

According to the business the biggest problem are the late payments between the companies - about BGN 220bn, the crisis is expected to solve this problem too.

According to the analysts the road and infrastructure construction has one of the biggest potential for growth.