Ferdinand took Bulgaria's actual circumstances into account, subjected the plan to rational analysis, made a round of cuts, and successfully slimmed down the Ministry of Industry's grand industrialization plan.
The original procurement budget of 60 million pounds had been cut in half. Even so, the Bulgarian government's finances still could not cover it!
Industrial equipment could not simply be bought and left at that; factories had to be built, workers recruited, and none of those expenses were small figures!
By Ferdinand's estimate, ordinary engineers were a dime a dozen during this economic crisis.
But senior engineers were different. Even amid the economic crisis, they could still get by. Britain and France had solid foundations and colonies to support them, while quite a few powerful major enterprises remained. Those corporations did not mind taking in a few highly skilled talents even now!
If he wanted to poach people, he had no choice but to look toward smaller countries—Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, and the like. Their overall industry might not compare to that of the great powers, but they still had some high-level technical talent!
They had far fewer domestic enterprises, and those enterprises were not nearly as powerful. During the economic crisis, most were too busy saving their own skins to spare the strength or money needed to retain talent!
That brought up another problem: language. Nearly every engineer would need to be paired with an interpreter. Those interpreters would probably have to be hired externally; Bulgaria did not have that many foreign-language specialists. Just thinking about it made Ferdinand shudder!
He could not help being grateful that Russian and Bulgarian were mutually intelligible. Otherwise, they probably would not even be able to scrape together that many interpreters!
Trying to overtake others on the fast track always came at a