Emil Karanikolov, head of Bulgaria's Privatization and Post-Privatization Control Agency (PPCA), has said that he is starting talks for staff cuts at military plant VMZ Sopot.

Under the collective bargaining agreement between the trade unions and the state-owned arms manufacturer, employees of VMZ Sopot can only be dismissed with the explicit consent of the representatives of the Podkrepa Labor Confederation and the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions in Bulgaria (CITUB) at the company. In a Tuesday interview for private TV station bTV, Karanikolov noted that VMZ Sopot had run up debts of around BGN 150 M and had a total of 3200 employees and could not survive with its current headcount and had to be reformed, Novinite reports.