Sofia Airport Expects Higher '08 Net Profit on Higher Passenger Traffic

“[Net profit] for the first eight months of this year is 16 million levs, which gives me reason to believe that for the whole of 2008 after-tax profit will be no less than 22-23 million levs,” Sofia Airport’s director Plamen Stanchev told Pari in an interview.

This compares to 21 million levs for 2007 and 23 million levs for 2006, he added.

Passenger traffic at the airport in the first nine months of 2008 rose by 19% year-on-year to 2.49 million people and is seen reaching 3.1 million by the end of the year, the airport said in October. Twenty percent of the passengers through September travelled by low-cost air carriers.

Sofia Airport handled 13,734 tonnes through September, up by 5.1% from the same period a year earlier.

(1 euro = 1.95583 Bulgarian levs)