November 16 (SeeNews) - Following are some of the main stories in Bulgarian newspapers on Monday morning. SeeNews has not verified these reports and cannot vouch for their accuracy.
PARI
- Bulgarian Finance Minister Simeon Dyankov said he was pleasantly surprised with Bulgaria’s economic contraction of just 4.8% in the first nine months of the year, saying he had expected a sharper decline. National statistics also showed a 5.8% drop in gross domestic product in the third quarter.
- Pension funds in Bulgaria will be the first to come out of the recession, the chairman of the Bulgarian Association of Supplementary Pension Security Companies, Nikola Abadzhiev, told the newspaper in an interview. The average return posted by the pension funds in October exceeded 6.0%, providing further evidence they are poised for a rebound.
SEGA
- The construction of a second bridge over the Danube river linking Bulgaria and Romania is facing a 14-month delay and will be completed by the end of December 2011, not in 2010 as was initially planned, Bulgaria’s Transport Minister Alexander Tsvetkov said. The project is getting European Union financing, but Bulgaria may lose 70 million euro of the allocation if the existing funding agreement is not renegotiated, as it expires at the end of 2010.
- Bulgaria is fast becoming a somewhat unlikely frontrunner in the European wind energy industry, the daily said, quoting the businessgreen.com news portal. According to experts, the country will see a tenfold increase in wind energy capacity over the next decade to 3,000 megawatts, providing 13.5% of Bulgaria's electricity.
DNEVNIK
- Bulgaria’s ruling right-wing party GERB has won the mayoral election in Sofia in a landslide. GERB candidate Yordanka Fandakova, outgoing education minister, garnered 68.3% of the votes ahead of the candidate fielded by the Bulgarian Socialist Party with 25.8%, data from a parallel count conducted by Alpha Research indicated. Voter turnout was at a lowly 23.17%, the polling agency said.