Bulgaria's export increased by 37% in the first seven months of the year, Bulgarian Minister of Economy, Energy and Tourism Traicho Traikov said Friday at the presentation of a national export portal.

The bilingual (Bulgarian-English) online platform was created with funding from the "Competitiveness" Operational Program under a project of the Bulgarian Small and Medium Enterprises Promotion Agency (BSMEPA).

The total cost of the portal was BGN 73 000.

The presentation, however, failed to shed light on how the website would gain popularity among foreign business executives, as Darik finance reported.

The company contracted to create the portal identified Google search as the source of 80% if the traffic to the website.

Minister Traikov reminded that Bulgaria already had a similar online platform about tourism, which, however, had a specially designed presentational campaign due to the wide range of consumers target.

In the first few weeks the national export portal attracted 3500 visits and 77 registrations of companies from the food and textile industries, electronics and machine-building.

In the course of Friday's presentation, it was revealed that, out of a total of 315 000 small and medium-sized enterprises in Bulgaria, only 70 000 had export potential.