Business in Bulgaria

What is your opinion for doing business in Bulgaria? Did you have some problems when you start?
Do you think that Bulgaria is a good place for starting business?
Tell us more about your experience in this field.

I think Bulgaria would be a good place to start business as it would generate employment locally? As an area there are many options regards horticulture or agriculture farming or livestock?
I can not personally comment on starting up a business as yet but I have property here and have land that could be farmed? It might be something that I would consider in the future?

Bulgaria is fairly decent for IT companies. Social securities take a big chunk out of profits (the 10% tax is a bit misleading, IMO, but then, I have never had a business in another country).

There are plenty of workers. Skill level is moderate to high. Definitely beginning to bloat, though. My friend is a recruiter and she says that IT workers just out of school with no experience (Which if you know the education system here, an IT degree is almost meaningless) are starting to request 5-6K lev as a starting salary. Not that they are GETTING it, but you can see that it will become harder to hire skilled and cheap labor.

We opened a company in a small city (Gabrovo) hoping to not have to compete against larger companies for skilled workers. Unfortunately for us, a year after we opened our company here, a multinational company opened an office. Not sure how that is going to effect our labor sources when we try to grow. It goes to show that Bulgarian cities, even small ones, can be a good place to open IT companies... but the competition is getting much stiffer in that sector.

Oh, and our company rarely works with Bulgarian clients, except on pro-bono work for non-profits. They simply cannot (or will not) pay even low-end prices for a decent website. The few times we have worked with Bulgarian clients, it has come back to bite us. (Overly demanding and not making payments on time). I am sure there are some good Bulgarian clients out there, but in our field and specialization, we haven't found them. For now, we only work with foreign clients.