Bulgaria "is mounting a convincing challenge" as a candidate for cost-effective, high-quality nearshoring," the outsourcing head of a Slovakia-based IT services company has said.

The county's potential "may come as a shock", according to the summary of a text by Tomas Turkovic, Soitron Director for Outsourcing, published by Channelnomics.eu.

Though it is "premature" to call the country "the Silicon Valley of Europe" due to smaller IT workforce and limited possibilities for business development compared to countries like Poland, Turkovic explains.

However, the increasingly business-friendly culture, "insanely competitive" business office space in the capital Sofia, and the big number of IT graduates willing to work in start-ups play to Bulgaria's advantage.

With a local IT sector growing by 2% every year and an export-oriented software market, Bulgaria counts on the IT industry as one of "the fastest-growing of all Bulgaria's industries," Turkovic writes, citing data from several sources.

The executive adds several more arguments to the well-known business-friendly tax regime of the country (10% corporate income tax): "So competent are Bulgarian tech workers that the requirement for them has stretched across Europe and are also in high demand in the US."

A ranking by AT Kearney is cited which placed Bulgaria 9th among the world's good outsourcing destinations for 2014.

Proficiency of Bulgarians in "useful business languages" is described as "the cherry on top" for investors seeking a "fresh alternative".

You can read the full text here.

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