BCCI President Mr. Tsvetan Simeonov Asked the Employers to Develop Professional Standards for Competitiveness of Bulgarian Workers

The President of the Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Mr. Tsvetan Simeonov met with Mr. Ivan Neikov from the Balkan Institute for Labour and Social Policy. The occasion for the meeting was the discrepancy between the state educational requirements and the professional standards for skills and qualifications needed by the employers. This has to do with the acute problem of the competitiveness of Bulgarian workers.  
In order for the Bulgarian labour force to meet the requirements of the modern labour market, a long-term national programme for continuous education should be developed  - at least once every 5 years each worker should have the opportunity and the motivation to improve his/her professional knowledge and skills.
In this sense, the BCCI as the largest employers’ organization will encourage the branch organizations to participate more actively in the process of defining adequate requirements needed by the entrepreneurs from various professional domains.
“For employers, who are the actual consumers of the constantly increasing requirements to the knowledge and skills of the employees and workers, this is an essential process and we will demand to hear the opinion of the Minister of Education on the subject as soon as possible”, Mr. Tsvetan Simeonov said.
During the meeting, the two parties discussed the idea of the Balkan Institute to use the experience of the United Kingdom, where for over 120 years employers have been conducting regular independent assessments of the knowledge and skills of workers from almost 2000 occupations in the economy.