Navigation Maritime Bulgare (NaviBulgar) must not be privatised through selling it to a rival company, said ex-minister to transport and communications Antony Slavinski at an international conference of telecommunications held in Varna. The Bulgarian Stock Exchange (BSE) is the right way to divest the company with a massive participation of Bulgarian financial institutions, which are financing Bulgaria’s maritime corporation. Small telecommunication operators which entered the market during the last ten months are targeting the corporate segment held by the Bulgarian Telecommunications Company (BTC). The new players lease BTC infrastructure and offer an optimal service package to BTC’s key corporate clients in an attempt to pull them out of the BTC service. This is why BTC will concentrate its efforts on preserving this segment. Meanwhile the new players have no interest in investing in conventional networks, so the mass consumer will have to wait another couple of years or so for a competition to appear on the conventional service market. BTC’s advantage in the coming years is the expansion digitalisation, which must reach 42% by March 2004. None of the experts of BTC, the ministry and the communications regulatory body wished to comment on the BTC sale. Slavinski said that the sale procedure is in grave stalemate and expecting it to come to a good end is not realistic. The strategy approved by the parliamentary majority is inapplicable and the Privatisation agency has to play the scapegoat. The only way out for Slavinski is the parliament to develop a new strategy.