Straight in the Eyes

Well, we lived to see it! Yes, we lived long enough to be told by a foreigner how we, Bulgarians, are always on the losing side when it comes to a conflict of interest between society and foreign investors. We lived to see an American explaining to us that corruption is the leading factor in our domestic business. We lived to be told by someone living on the other side of the ocean that we let suspicious foreign companies put their suspicious money here because we wanted fast and easy earnings. We lived to hear that our infrastructure needs at least 20 years to reach an acceptable level. It’s not that we did not know that from before, but it’s a different story when “someone from outside” tells us that.

The report by American financial analyst William Sullivan, devoted to the business environment in our country, is painfully honest — probably because his purpose is not to flatter or renounce the current or former “strong figures of the day,” and he also doesn’t need to maintain a politically correct thesis like many other publications of the kind. His idea is to draw a realistic picture of the way people at home do business — with money swept under the table, suspicious deals, unverifiable guilt of the suspects, scandals on the top, misuse of European funds and etc.

This is because his target group is the investors. And the serious foreign firms do not really care about how good our government is, how smart the Minister of Resources is or how good his intentions are. What they do care about is if, when they come to our clerks with a salary of 800 leva that the report mentions, they will be asked to give a “donation” so that their issue will be resolved. The really serious investors do not care about tears and persuasions that everything in the country will flourish if they “just wait another five to six years.” They want to know that things will go smoothly here and now.

Therefore, Sullivan’s report is valuable not only to foreign investors but also to us because, in our familiar pattern, “here and now” is not a great picture. What is more, while domestic businessmen have obviously adapted to the rules of the jungle at home, foreign investors, used to working under entirely different conditions, will hardly ever resign. In all of this, we are the ones who lose.