SOFIA, July 13 (Reuters) - Bulgaria's state railway company BDZ plans to reduce its staff by 600 people, after cutting another 700 jobs earlier this year as the economic crisis bites, it said on Monday.
The Balkan country, like its central and eastern European peers, has been hard hit by the global financial crisis as foreign investors flee emerging markets and the euro zone, its key export destination, has plunged into recession.
"At this stage, 600 positions are pending dismissal," a spokeswoman for BDZ said.
Freight volumes at BDZ, which currently employs 15,532 people, have dropped 36 percent in the first five months of the year on an annual basis as a result of the economic slowdown.
The ailing company, whose restructuring has been long delayed by virtually all governments since the fall of communism in 1989, posted a loss of 9.2 million levs ($6.54 million) in 2008 although it received 135.5 million levs in state subsidies.
More than half of BDZ's passenger train carriages are over 20 years old and experts say the company needs some 2.6 billion levs for upgrades and modernisation.
Bulgaria's jobless rate stood at 7.1 percent in May but trade unions say it will jump to double digits as hundreds of mainly metals, textile, construction and chemical companies halt or cut down operations and reduce their staff.
Economic experts at the centre-right GERB party, which won a July 5 parliamentary election and will lead the next government, say keeping unemployment under control will be a key priority in their anti-crisis programme.
In June, thousands of Bulgarian workers rallied in central Sofia to press the outgoing Socialist-led government to protect jobs and people's incomes as discontent with its failure to shield the economy from the global crisis grows. ($1=1.406 Leva) (Reporting by Irina Ivanova; Editing by Jon Loades-Carter)