Ruse Chamber of Commerce and Industry

In the first years after the liberation, Rousse is the largest city and business center of the Principality of Bulgaria. The important importance of the city is determined by its rapid industrial development and the traditional trade relations it maintains with the Danube countries. The international business contacts enable an important part of the Ruse trade and craft industry in the pre-liberation period to realize an initial accumulation of capital. Early in the 1980s and early 1990s, the Russians were shaken by their previous understanding of the use of free capital. They created the first joint-stock companies in the country: Girdap (1881), the First Bulgarian Insurance Company "Bulgaria" (1890), Bulgarian Commercial Bank (1895) and others. By 1890 Rousse had 14 bigger factories of the metalworking, chemical, food, ceramic, leather and others. industries. Significant growth also marks trade. Only between 1885 and 1903 there were registered 135 commercial companies in the city.

In these conditions, in 1889-1890, the establishment of a trade organization - First Bulgarian Private Chamber of Commerce, with monthly contributions of its members, was considered in Ohhanes Enkennian's cafe on "Knyazheskaya Street". Probably from the spring of 1890 the newly established Chamber of Commerce for the first time in the country began to operate. This first chamber association in Bulgaria emerged as a private trade organization without the protection of the central state administration, copying the structure of the English free chambers. The members of the first chamber association with voluntary sacrifices hire Enkennian's coffee as a meeting room and seat. They also buy the furniture in the same way. The newspaper "Slavyani" comes out with a big article, which welcomes the "good internal structure" of the Chamber of Commerce and points out that "it honors those who have undertaken its creation." At the beginning of its existence, the Chamber of Commerce in Ruse occupies its place in the public and economic life of the city. On July 19, 1890, the Chamber gave a banquet in honor of the visit to Ruse of Prime Minister Stefan Stambolov. The initial activity of the first chamber of commerce, however, is not just about representative events. At the end of 1890 the members of the Chamber became initiators and established in Rousse the first Bulgarian insurance joint-stock company "Bulgaria". The chairman of the Chamber, P.A. Popov, was elected chairman.
The economic development of the country since the mid-1990s has increasingly impeded the legislative regulation of the modernization of Bulgarian production and trade by European standards. In this connection, the Minister of Trade and Agriculture Ivan Geshov introduced the bill for the establishment of the Chambers of Commerce and Industry (TIC) to the National Assembly on 19-20 December 1894. He points out that these institutions "have little to thank for improving the trade and industry, those countries that have had the opportunity before us to set them up. " He is convinced that the "arranging" of chambers in Bulgaria "will not delay to bring invaluable services for our local trade and industry". The rules of the Chambers Act, published by Decree No 61 of April 17, 1895, distinguish the areas of operation of the initially established four chambers - Sofia, Plovdiv, Ruse and Varna. The Chambers are granted the status of relatively autonomous institutions with administrative functions, subsidized by the state according to the model of the French TIC.

Since 1895 the House in Ruse has been named "Ruse Chamber of Commerce and Industry" (RCCI). The area of its activity covers almost the whole of Northern Bulgaria from the Timok River to Silistra, including 30 districts. After the establishment of the Regional Economic Chamber (ROC) in Ruse in the autumn of 1943 its area decreased, covering only the Ruse administrative district. The RCCI as well as the other CCIs in the country, even after their organizational structure, have begun to fulfill their main task of assisting the governmental bodies in legislative work on all economic issues.