The Bulgarian government is considering the founding of a new foreign trade company to be in charge of Bulgaria's arms exports.

The news was announced by Bulgaria's Deputy Economy Minister, Yavor Kuyumdzhiev, as cited by BTA, who said the new company would most likely be a public-private partnership.

Kuyumdzhiev also said the Council of Ministers is going to review a draft strategy for the development of the Bulgarian arms trade sector at the beginning of June.

The future company is said to include representatives of the Bulgarian arms industry associations, Bulgarian arms producers, and the Bulgarian state as shareholders.

Another option is to transform the presently existing state-owned company Kintex, which deals with arms exports and imports for the Bulgarian Army and police, through adding private partners.

The setting up of the new company is said to promote the Bulgarian arms exports on the global market. The initiative enjoys the support of the Bulgarian Arms Industry Association.

According to Stefan Vodenicharov, the Chair of the Association, Bulgaria has missed a lot of benefits because of the lack of such a company.

Representatives of Kintex also believe that such a new umbrella organization would be useful if it managed to overcome the existing unfair competition among Bulgarian arms producers on the same foreign markets, the Pari Daily reported.

Kintex representatives have pointed out that similar umbrella companies of the arms industry existed in Italy and Russia, and had managed to boost substantially the volume of exports and long-term contracts of the respective arms producers.