Bulgaria's and Russia's Prime Ministers, Boyko Borisov and Vladimir Putin, have discussed the joint energy projects in a third telephone call for the past three weeks, the spokesman of the Russian government has announced.

Putin will visit Sofia on November 13, 2010, for talks not just on South Stream gas transit pipeline, but also on other large-scale energy projects – the Belene nuclear power plant and the Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline.

This will be Putin's first visit to Sofia after the cabinet of the center-right GERB party swept into power in July 2009. GERB then decided to freeze the large-scale energy projects in Bulgaria, which have been negotiated while the Russian PM was still a president, together with the Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov during Bulgaria's previous cabinet.

The expectations are that on Saturday Borisov and Putin will shake hands on South Stream and Belene NPP projects.

The speaker of the Russian government, Dmitry Peskov, has announced that the two prime minister had also discussed other topic on their bilateral cooperation but no further details have been disclosed.

After his previous talk with Putin at the beginning of November, Borisov said that the meeting will be held on a non-working day, so that the two can widely discuss the revival of the trade with Bulgarian goods in Russia.

His statement triggered speculations about the linking of the joint venture for South Stream with Russian commitments for increasing of the import of Bulgarian goods in the country.

"You should ask the two prime ministers whether the contract with Gazprom will unofficially, or rather diplomatically, be connected to the future turnover," Bulgaria's Economy Minister, Traicho Traikov, said Wednesday.

He reiterated that the final decision for the Bulgarian investments will be taken after the announcement of the results from the pre-investment report, which will show whether the project is profitable for the country.

"The capital in the joint venture will be as required for the respective stage of the project's development. As you know, Bulgaria is participating with 50% in it," Traikov said.

The pre-investment report will define the price of the Bulgarian trace, half of which should be paid by the Bulgarian Energy Holding or its assignee.

The Bulgarian Economy Ministry is planning to put the energy projects like South Stream, Belene NPP and Nabucco in one holding after the upcoming restructuring of the Bulgarian Energy Holding.

The meeting on Saturday is expected to reveal the scheme for continuation of the project for the construction of the second nuclear power plant at Belene.

Bulgaria is also hoping to discuss the decrease of the price of Russian gas for the country by 5%. The topic was not discussed during the visit of the Gazprom CEO, Alexey Miller, in Sofia on October 15.

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