Total Collapse of Foreign Direct Investments in Bulgaria, According to a Report of the Bulgarian Industrial Association

The collapse of foreign direct investment in Bulgaria is total. This was said by Radosvet Radev, executive chairman of the Bulgarian Industrial Association. The BIA submitted a report for the period 2007 - 2017. The decline is deepening also in the current 2018, with investments in the first half being two times less than in the past.

The report states that the total volume of investments in Bulgaria in the period 2007-2017. remained relatively constant - about BGN 18 billion per year, with a peak in 2008 when it reached BGN 24 billion. The share of local investment in the total volume of investments has been drastically increasing with a parallel collapse of foreign investment.

For the period 2007-2017 the annual flow of net foreign investment decreased almost 10 times, reaching its lowest level in 2017, amounting to BGN 1858 million. or 1.9% of GDP.

Considered as a share of GDP, foreign direct investment is steadily declining. Investment intensity is characterized by the capacity of the economy to attract foreign investment. If in 2007 they were 27.9% of GDP, they were only 1.9% of GDP in 2017, a 15-fold decrease. This unfavorable trend is further increasing for the first half of 2018 compared to the same period in 2017. The decline is twofold - from 1% to 0.5%.