Bulgarian Arms Exports Reach 120 Million Euros a Year
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, SOFIA
Bulgaria’s arms and military equipment exports reached 120 million euros ($152 million) annually in recent years, with imports of some 90 million euros, the economy ministry said Sept. 13.
The figures, previously kept secret, will from now on be made public and communicated to the European Union, which Bulgaria hopes to join on January 1, 2007, said Ivelina Bahchevanova of the ministry’s trade department.
Along with traditional buyers of Bulgarian weapons in Asia and Africa, Bulgaria began shipping arms to the United States, Canada, Japan, and the European Union, Bahchevanova said.
During the communist years before 1989, Bulgaria’s annual arms exports were at between $700 and $800 million. The arms industry employed 115,000 people compared to only 20,000 now.
But the industry suffered a hard blow in the 1990s when it lost its Warsaw Pact market as well as Arab and African countries hit by international embargos.
Meanwhile, under pressure from the United States, Bulgarian authorities kept applying ever stricter licensing regimes for arms trading companies. Currently, all licenses to firms and authorizations of arms sale contracts are delivered by an interministerial council.
Deputy economy minister Kornelia Ninova also announced that the government on Sept. 13 adopted a bill rendering Bulgaria’s arms trade control policies in line with the EU legislation.
There are some 60 companies licensed to trade in arms in Bulgaria.
