02150cas a2200241 a 4500 AALejournalIMF017218 230101c9999 xx r poo 0 0eng d 5.00 USD 9781475552492 1934-7685 BD-DhAAL BD-DhAAL International Monetary Fund. European Dept. Bulgaria : Selected Issues Paper. Washington, D.C. : International Monetary Fund, 2016. 1 online resource (66 pages) IMF Staff Country Reports <strong>Off-Campus Access:</strong> No User ID or Password Required <strong>On-Campus Access:</strong> No User ID or Password Required Electronic access restricted to authorized BRAC University faculty, staff and students This paper highlights Bulgaria's state-owned enterprises (SOEs) sector and to assess its performance in a regional perspective. A detailed and rich firm-level dataset of state-owned and private firms was compiled for this note to compare key performance indicators of SOEs to private firms in the same sector and to similar firms in Croatia and Romania for a regional comparison. In some network industries, such as energy, SOEs are heavily loss-making. Large amounts of debt have been piled up notably in the energy and transport sectors which, to the extent that it is classified outside the general government accounts, can pose significant risk to public finances in the form of contingent liabilities if the SOEs run into financial difficulties. SOE profitability and resource allocation efficiency largely lag private firms in the same sectors, even when isolating SOEs engaged in competitive market activities and hence classified outside of general government. Coupled with comparably poor output quality, these challenges have the potential to impair competitiveness and productivity across the economy. Mode of access: Internet IMF Staff Country Reports; Country Report ; No. 2016/345 Full text available on IMF http://elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/002/2016/345/002.2016.issue-345-en.xml IMF e-Library