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Bulgaria with record-breaking 3% growth

Friday, Mar 11, 2016

Bulgaria's economy achieved record growth of 3% in 2015. This is the largest GDP growth in the past seven years after the global financial crisis, according to the National Statistics Institute. This growth is much higher than all previous estimates. According to the autumn forecast of the Ministry of Finance, GDP growth was expected to be only 2%. In 2015, the GDP totaled BGN 86,373 billion, or EUR 44,162 billion. This is EUR 6,136 per capita. The country's economy performed well throughout 2015. In the fourth quarter GDP growth was 3%, which is the best result in the last 19 fiscal quarters, since the beginning of 2011. The average growth in the first two quarters was 2.6% and 2.9% in the third quarter of 2015. The growth in the period from October to December amounted to BGN 23,699 billion or EUR 12,117 billion. The growth per capita was EUR 1,687. This is up 0.7% from the previous quarter.

Bulgaria ranks around the average among EU countries in terms of economic growth in the last quarter of 2015. We're topped in annual growth by countries such as Sweden (+4.5%), the Czech Republic and Slovakia (+4%), Romania (+ 3.8%) and Poland (3.7%). Among the worst in the EU are Greece (with a decline of 0.8%), Finland (up 0.7%) and Estonia (+ 0.9%).

The share of agriculture in the economy decreased by 0.1 percentage points to 3.7% in the fourth quarter of 2015 y/y. The industry increased its share by 1.4% to 25%, while the share of services decreased to 71.3% from 72.6% a year earlier. In the fourth quarter the economic growth per year was due to the following: administrative activities - 3.6%, industry - 3.4%, production and distribution of information and creative products, telecommunications - 2.8%, finance and insurance - 1.7%, real estate - 1.4%, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles, transport, warehousing, hotels and restaurants - 1.2%, and construction - 1.2%.

It is important to note that state expenditures made a significant contribution to economic growth. In the fourth quarter of 2015 collective consumption increased by 2.1%, and individual consumption - by 1%. Investments increased by 1.7% and imports and exports increased by 3.4% and 4.2% respectively.

Source: www.standartnews.com