October 8 (SeeNews) - Following are some of the main stories in Bulgarian newspapers on Thursday morning. SeeNews has not verified these reports and cannot vouch for their accuracy.
DNEVNIK
- Bulgaria will appply for a 3.3 million lev worth of EU aid from the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund to help laid-off workers of insolvent steel mill Kremikovtzi and Danube port of Lom acquire new job skills. A total 1,507 Kremikovtzi workers have been laid off so far, Labour Minister Totyu Mladenov said.
- The share of bad loans in the banking systems of Bulgaria and Romania will reach 15-20% of their loan portfolio in the next 12 months, a survey of Deutsche Bank Research for Central and East Europe showed.
- Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov said he would discuss with his German counterpart Angela Merkel the possible withdrawal of German power group RWE from the project to build the Belene nuclear power plant in Bulgaria. RWE owns 49% of the Belene project and Bulgaria's power grid operator NEK owns the rest.
- Discount supermarket chain Penny Market, part of Germany's REWE Group, plans to open 20-30 outlets in Bulgaria by the end of the year, in which it will invest 100 million euro, the company manager for Bulgaria Vasil Fechko said. Penny Market plans to invest 250 million euro in Bulgaria in the next five years and build a second logistics centre near the northeastern city of Shumen. It opened its first logistics centre near Sofia on Wednesday.
SEGA
- Pencho Popov was appointed on Wednesday the chief executive of state-run railway company BDZ, Transport Minister Alexander Tsvetkov said.
PARI
- The number of passengers at the Sofia Airport fell 3.0% on the year in the first nine months of 2009, the airport's executive director Plamen Stanchev said.
- An unnamed German company plans to invest 44 million euro in a solar park with an installed capacity of 11.5 megawatts and a further 114 million euro in a separate project using both wind and solar energy to generate electricity near Svoge, 33 kilometres north of Sofia.
KLASA
- Internet advertising spendings in Bulgaria totalled 15 million euro last year, which is equal to 0.1% of total web advertising spending in Europe, said Plamen Rusev, host of the first business-to-business Internet Business and Marketing Exhibition & Conference for Southeastern Europe Webit that opened in Sofia on Wednesday.