May 13 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria's government said on Wednesday that it has decided to reduce the taxes paid by air carriers for the use of Sofia Airport in 2020, in order to incentivise them to retain or even expand their flight network from Sofia.
The measure can not be defined as state aid as there are strictly defined criteria in accordance to which air carriers will be selected to benefit from the reduced taxes, such as the number of passengers carried in the past one year, the government said in a statement following its weekly meeting.
Such measures have already been adopted by a number of airports in Europe, including Amsterdam, Athens, Brussels, Budapest, Vienna, Dublin, etc, the government noted.
Passenger traffic at Sofia Airport plunged 52.9% to 269,419 in March alone, as Bulgaria introduced a state of emergency over the coronavirus pandemic on March 13 and subsequently banned flights from a number of destinations. The state of emergency is scheduled to end on Wednesday.
Sofia Airport's net profit dropped by an annual 40.8% to 2.2 million levs ($1.2 million/1.1 million euro) in the first quarter of 2020.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)