Bulgaria’s new centre-right minority government is going to have to hit the ground running if it wants to head off the downward trend in the country’s economy, while possibly having to fight to stay in office long enough to make an impact. Boiko Borissov, the mayor of Sofia and Bulgaria’s new prime minister, campaigned on a platform of restoring the country’s economy to health and putting…
While Bulgaria's tourism sector is already suffering from the financial crisis, the government has been quick to enact necessary measures to soften long-term impact. According to Anelia Krushkova, the head of Bulgaria's state Tourism Agency (SAT), the number of foreign tourists in Bulgaria has declined this winter season and is anticipated to shrink to an even greater extent during the summer of…
When hidden transactions are said to equate to anywhere between a quarter and a third of a country's GDP, any government should rightly get alarmed - and Bulgaria has been no exception in this regard. In the face of a number of seemingly troubling estimates of the scope of the country's dodgy accounting practices, the Bulgarian government has taken measures to ensure businesses pay the sovereign…
With October 2 marking the end of the "800 days" former King Simeon II had promised a government under his charge would take to dramatically improve Bulgarians' standard of living, the jury is still out on whether he can now claim any real success. Two years down the track, and in the face of a challenging nationwide mayoral election set for the end of the month, Bulgarians are now looking long and…
While the latest European Union report gave Bulgaria a string of good marks for progress, most were left in no doubt that there are still plenty of hurdles for the country to overcome before membership in 2007. Meanwhile, there were also concerns about the gap between the country's economy and those of its neighbours when it comes to EU accession. The European Commission progress report, released…
This year sees Bulgaria and the US celebrate a century of diplomatic relations, with a once-frosty distance now transformed into a generally warm friendliness. Of late, Bulgaria has also been strengthening its ties with the US, particularly thanks to its role as a staunch supporter of the US-led 'War on Terrorism'. Now, this may pay off economically, with contracts for Bulgarian firms in Iraq promised…
While praising progress so far, the latest report from a top European agency also warns that much still remains to be done with Bulgaria's economy. Meanwhile, the authors of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) report also expressed their frustration at the government's lack of popularity -- despite its success with reforms. The EBRD's annual survey of Eastern Europe's emerging…
At the heart of contemporary Bulgarian politics lies an intriguing paradox: while international observers are quick to praise the country's "healthy and positive" macroeconomic indicators, the population at large is still anxiously waiting to see the benefits of their nation's difficult transition towards a market-led economy. In his speech to the American Chamber of Commerce in early October,…
With the IMF in town and talk in Sofia of ending any further loans, attention shifted this week to the question of debt in general. The difficulty of finding a reliable method of calculating how the country's borrowing has shifted was given an airing, while the growing role of the private sector in accounting for the nation's debts was given wide comment - along with its implications for the banking…
With new statistics showing a widening trade gap getting wider, the country's accelerating balance of payments problems came increasingly under the spotlight this week. Yet despite obvious concerns, the problem was widely thought not as bad as it might seem, given a variety of more positive factors lying behind the figures. Meanwhile, the figures showed some other important signs of just where the…
