Economic trends
Bulgaria has experienced a strong growth since 1996. Successive governments have shown a commitment to establish tax and economic reforms, but they have not accomplished to control inflation and the current account deficit. During the last few years, Bulgaria has experienced a growth of more than 6%, attracting a lot of FDI; however, there are still many challenges to be resolved, especially, corruption problems in the public administration, the weakness of the judiciary system, and the increase of organized crime.
Bulgaria was strongly affected by the financial crisis of 2008 and the country went into recession in 2009. As a member of the European Union, Bulgaria is subject to respect certain economic criteria. Bulgaria established a series of measures aiming to improve its economy and, most of all, to reduce its public deficit. These measures taken by the country as well as the perspective of adopting the Euro as its currency in 2013 can predict a positive outcome to the financial and economic crisis.
Main branches of industry
Traditionally an agricultural country, Bulgaria is now considerably industrialized. The country has a skilled and inexpensive workforce. Nearly a third of the population works in the industrial sector. Bulgaria's main mineral resources include bauxite, copper, lead, zinc, coal, lignite (brown coal), iron ore, oil and natural gas.
Industry still depends on heavy manufacturing sectors (metallurgical, chemical, machine building), which were developed during the socialist period. However, the most dynamic sectors are textile, pharmaceutical products, cosmetic products, and now, the mobile telephone industry.
International trade
Since its entry into the European Union, Bulgaria has achieved a considerable growth in its trade (+ 23%), despite its large imbalance of EUR 4.4 billion in deficit. Situated farther south from Romania, Bulgaria is less dependent on other European countries, even though they still represent 50% of the country's exports and imports.
Bulgarian exports go mainly to Italy, Turkey, Belgium, Greece, the United States and France. Bulgaria mainly exports semi-processed goods and unprocessed products. The country's main imports are food products, fuel, energy and capital goods from Germany, Italy, Russia, Greece, France and Austria. The rise in energy prices has made of Russia the leading supplier of Bulgaria, followed by Germany and Italy.
In 2009 and 2010, foreign trade was indirectly affected by the global economic crisis to the point that Bulgaria's main partner countries, which are in majority European countries, reduced their orders, as it was the case of Greece which was severely affected by the financial crisis and, therefore, strongly reduced its imports from Bulgaria. If the economic situation of Bulgaria's trade partners improves in 2011, the level of Bulgarian imports will pick up again.
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