Bulgaria Tops European Charts For New Shopping Mall Construction

There is an explosion in the construction of new shopping malls in Bulgaria, a tendency which is apparently unaffected by the economic stagnation caused by the global crisis, declining customers and lack of financing in the market.

The international consultant company Cushman & Wakefield has revealed in a report, quoted by Stroitelstvo Gradut, that Bulgaria is a European leader in terms of new construction completed for the first six months of 2009. Moreover, Bulgaria is likely to retain that first position for the next 18 months as envisaged new retail space due for completion in the country will augment it by 3.7 times its current capacity.

Bulgaria still trails at the bottom of the European charts as far as total area of shopping malls in Europe, per capita of population, is concerned. Perhaps this is scarcely surprising because, according to statistics, the average Bulgarian has only slightly more than a third of the purchasing power of the average northwest European.

However, should construction levels in Bulgaria maintain the same level, by the end of 2011, Bulgaria will have progressed from the current 25 sq m per 1000 people to levels currently enjoyed by Belgium, Malta and Croatia, who have anything from 100 to 75 sq m per 1000 people, provided of course that the aforementioned countries do not construct additional shopping malls.

Furthermore, the Cushman & Wakefield report indicated that construction levels in Bulgaria are actually considerably slower than they would have been had it not been for the global economic downturn. This saw the number of proposed projects slashed by 20 per cent.

More than 500 000 sq m of new retail area are expected to be completed in Bulgaria, which is more than the proposed construction in the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany and the Ukraine.

In western Europe the crisis, lack of financing and crediting, the deteriorating global recession and many other interrelated factors have contributed to the sharp decline of total volume of proposed construction for 2011, which in comparison to corresponding figures during the peak of the sector in 2007 has marked a 45 per cent decline. According to the Cushman & Wakefield report, however, the industry expects a rise in business in the following two to three years.

In a report by the international consultant firm, Jones Lang LaSalle, it is revealed that the total volume of investments in shopping malls in Europe has risen by as much as 85 per cent in Q2 of 2009, reaching two billion euro. Those figures still amount to a 63 per cent drop as of levels from the first half of 2008, and the current 2009 figures are very similar to those the industry recorded in 2004.