Background

The Municipality of Ragrad is one of the municipalities included in the Technical Twinning Program funded by USAID and managed by FLGR and ICMA. The US partner to the Municipality of Razgrad in this programme is the City of Brunswick, Ohio. The main aim of the cooperative activity is to create an organization and give a start to the Center for Economic Development (CED). The CED general strategic goal is to support the small business and foster a favourable environment for entrepreneurship, consultancy services and planning, marketing, information provision and other activities aiming at ensuring economic stability of the region.

Practice

To prepare the project aiming at encouraging and support of the sustainable economic development of the Municpality of Razgrad substantial effort and time has been devoted on the part of a large number of specialists. One of the ideas generated in the process of creating the Center for Economic Development, is the preparation and publication of a marketing set including up-to-date information about Razgrad. This publication brings together in one place the most important economic and social information about the region, which in this compact form will attract more easily the attention and interest of potential donors from the country and abroad.

The first step is to find out what this document needs to include. The next step is to summarise and update the information available. Since such publication is innovative and there is no similar edition to present, specialists dispay a lot of independence in the search and selection of the information needed. In this innovative process the assistance of the heads of different municipal departments is invaluable, each of them preparing their own set of latest data. The assistance of the Territorial Tax Department and the Territorial Statistics Agency is also sought after. The rest of the information is obtained through direct contacts with representatives of the business in Razgrad.

One of the main difficulties encountered by the team preparing the marketing set is the enormous amount of information input by the certain institutions. The largest part of it is either outdated or not matching the project objectives. This requires additional processing of the data to obtain a more clear and live representation of a certain economic or social area.

The idea for developing a marketing set for the region is naturally incited by the exceptionally weak investors interest and the increasing rate of unemployment in Razgrad. Way are found to identify and advertise local resources, highlighting the natural prerequisites, and new possibilities are being sought for their better utilization.

The CED activity is focused on the economic development of the region, being wide in scope and aiming to turn the centre into a place for complex services for clients related in one or other way with the municipality economy. The activities can be listed in brief as: consultations, business training and qualification; collecting and utilization of business information; search and attraction of sources of funding; creation and management of business incubators; economic rating of the region; international contacts; publications; membership in other related organizations; contacts and cooperation with similar organizations in Bulgaria and internationally.

Results

A visible result of CED activity is a complete product, which represents the passport of the Municipality of Razgrad, increasing the city chances for attracting both internal and external investments. The project outcome almost completely matches the initial concept and this is to a large extent due to the fact that the marketing set of the City of Brunswick, Ohio is taken as an example. In the fall of 1999 eight local producers from Razgrad take part in the crafts exhibition in Armah, Northern Ireland, and in Kilkeny, the Republic of Ireland.

The Municpality of Razgrad extends its gratitude to the Foundation for Local Governemnt Reform for providing financial support to the publication of the marketing set.