Chapter 2: Bulgaria

(continued)

2.4 Profile of the Environmental Business Sector

The Bulgarian environmental business sector is small and comprises approximately 100 companies that provide environmental services and technologies. Although a number of the companies were established before 1980, Table 2.7 shows the majority are quite young, with more than 60 percent established after 1990. Most of the environmental businesses founded after 1990 are privately owned. As shown in Table 2.8, of the 68 companies interviewed, 54 percent were privately owned, 35 percent were state owned, and 7 percent of the companies were state-owned firms in the process of privatization.

TABLE 2.7: AGE BREAKDOWN OF ENVIRONMENTAL COMPANIES
Year Established	Percentage

After 1992	26%
1990-1992	34%
1980-1989	10%
Before 1980	30%

TABLE 2.8: OWNERSHIP STRUCTURE OF ENVIRONMENTAL BUSINESSES
Ownership	Percentage

Privately owned	54%
State owned	35%
State and privately owned	4%
In process of privatization	7%

As Table 2.9 shows, surveyed companies were outfitted with all types of modern office equipment. Almost all the companies were equipped with telephone lines; and personal computers, printers and fax machines were all relatively standard. However, only 14 percent said they have an e-mail connection.

TABLE 2.9: OFFICE EQUIPMENT USED
Office Equipment	% of respondents

Telephone	99%
Personal computer	87%
Fax	87%
Printer	82%
Photocopier	69%
Telex	31%
Modem	23%
Cellular phone	19%
On-line services connection	19%
Mainframe computer	15%
E-mail	14%
GIS computer	7%

Most of the companies are small. More than half the survey respondents employ 10 or fewer full-time employees, while only 16 percent employ more than 50. The breakdown is shown in Table 2.10. Overall, the number of people employed in the environmental business sector is not very high.

TABLE 2.10: EMPLOYEES INVOLVED IN ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVITIES
Number of employees	Full-time workers	Part-time/contractors

Up to 5	38%	-
6-10	13%	60%
11-20	15%	10%
21-50	18%	19%
More than 50	16%	11%

The surveyed companies reported annual environmental revenues exceeding USD 23 million in 1995, which represents approximately 20 percent of the estimated market. However, some of the companies would not provide detailed financial data, and as a result the total comes from only 42 of the 68 surveyed companies. The breakdown of companies by amount of revenue in 1995 is shown in Table 2.11.

TABLE 2.11: BREAKDOWN OF COMPANIES BASED ON REVENUES FROM ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVITIES IN 1995
Revenues (USD)	% of respondents

Less than 100,000	59%
101,000-250,000	17%
251,000-500,000	5%
501,000-1 million	6%
1 million-5 million	11%
More than 5 million	2%

The market is driven by technical services, which accounted for 46 percent of total annual revenues generated by surveyed businesses. As shown in Table 2.12, this is followed by the manufacture of environmental technologies (33 percent), testing and monitoring (11 percent) and other activities, e.g. research and development, education, etc. (10 percent).

TABLE 2.12: BREAKDOWN OF REVENUES BY ACTIVITY
Activity	% of revenues

Technical services	46%
Environmental technologies	33%
Testing, monitoring and laboratory	11%
Other	10%

Analysis by media shows that water and wastewater-related activities were the leading areas from which companies generated income (39 percent of revenues), followed by waste-related activities (25 percent). Other non-media specific activities (e.g. consultants activities which include more than one media like EMS, EIA, environmental planning, industrial safety and noise control, etc.) amounted to 20 percent of total annual environmental revenues. The breakdown is shown in Table 2.13.

TABLE 2.13: BREAKDOWN OF REVENUES BY MEDIA
Media	% of revenues

Water and wastewater	39%
Waste	25%
Air	8%
Energy	8%
Other (not media specific)	20%

Joint-ventures are rare in Bulgaria's environmental business market. Only 7 percent of the environmental businesses operate a joint-venture with a foreign company. The leading countries from which survey respondents had joint-venture partners were Austria and Germany (two joint-ventures indicated from each) and the United States (one joint-venture). The main foreign languages spoken by Bulgarian business representatives were Russian, English and German.

REC * PUBLICATIONS * EMERGING ENVIRONMENTAL MARKET 2 * BULGARIA