Bulgarian Small and Medium Enterprises Promotion Agency (BSMEPA)

The Bulgarian Small and Medium Enterprises Promotion Agency (BSMEPA) is a government body under the Minister of Economy. It was established with the amendments of the Law for SMEs in 2004 as a successor of the Bulgarian Trade Promotion Agency (BTPA) and the Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (ASME). BSMEPA has four specialised opperational Departments:

Information Services and Regional Coordination General Department Technological Development and Innovations Department Pre-accession Projects and Proggrammes Implementation Department Competitiveness and Entrepreneurial Skills Department.

Each of these departments has its own area of expertise and set of activities and together they elaborate and implement the major functions of the Agency, namely: information and consulting services, support to innovative projects and new technologies, assistance of Bulgarian companies in growing and entering into the foreign markets, managers training and transfer of experience through the implementation of international projects.

The BSMEPA's services are designed to meet the broad needs of Bulgarian business by providing general information and consultancy about Legal Regulations, Foreign Trade and Customs regulations, Foreign exchange and Investment regime, tax regime, employment relations and income taxation, International Agreements, Business supporting Programmes, Privatisation process, Crediting, Insurance, Non-banking financial institutions and support them to start, grow, become more competitive and enter into new markets.

The BSMEPA provides services in four major sectors, Information services, Consultancy services, Competitiveness and Entrepreneurial Skills Development as well as International

BSMEPA has public private partnership relations with the business communities NGO's in the country. (ex. BCCI, BIA, BARDA, UEB, Business Club "Vazrajdane" and many others).

The Directorate also undertakes all work related to the cooperation agreements, which has been signed between the Bulgaria Government and international trade promotion organizations like the Belgian Foreign Trade Board; the Spanish Foreign Trade Institute; Commerce and Tourism of Portugal; the Czech Trade Promotion Agency; the Export Promotion Center of Turkey; the Romanian Foreign Trade Center.

The Agency keeps contact with more than 80 partner trade promotion organizations in the system of the International Trade Center/ UNCTAD/WTO.