National Statistical Institute

In the period January - February 2021, the total value of all the goods exported from Bulgaria amounted to 9.6 billion leva, about 1.7 per cent less than in January - February 2020, the National Statistical Institute (NSI) said on April 13, citing preliminary data.

In 2020, 37,364 people changed their residence from abroad to Bulgaria, the National Statistical Institute (NSI) reported.

By 31 December 2020 the population of Bulgaria is 6,916,548 people, the National Statistical Institute (NSI) reported. Compared to 2019, the population of the country decreased by 34,934 people, or by 0.5 percent.

In March, the country's overall economic situation has been improving for the third consecutive month since the beginning of 2021, making up for the deterioration at the end of the previous year, according to the latest survey of the National Statistical Institute (NSI).

Owing to a recent spike in Covid-19 morbidity rates in Bulgaria the restaurants across the country will have to shut down again from March 22, and the owners worry that they will not return to work after 10 days.

In an interview for BTA, Institute for Market Economics (IME) senior economist Petar Ganev forecasts that in a good-case scenario, if in the summer Bulgaria has made significant progress with the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, thus removing concerns over a new shutdown of the economy in autumn, the country's GDP could grow by some 3 per cent in 2021 and even by 4 to 5 per cent in 2022.

Bulgaria is among the few countries in which there is growth in consumption and rising incomes during the coronavirus crisis. This was stated by Minister of Economy Lachezar Borisov during the virtual Economist event entitled EU Recovery and Resilience Fund for Bulgaria's Transition: Innovation - Green Agenda - Digital Transformation.

During the pandemic caused by COVID-19, Bulgarians eat more fruits at the expense of bread, pasta, processed meat and sugar. This is according to the data from a survey on consumption of staple food products for the fourth quarter of 2020, provided by the National Statistical Institute, BGNES reported.

Last year, the three power distributors managed to bill stolen electricity and found out it was as much as the entire Bulgaria consumes in 16 hours.

The amount equals almost 55 gigawatt/hours. According to data of the National Statistical Institute for 2020, the net average daily electricity consumption was 83.57 GW/h.

The deficit in Bulgaria's foreign trade last year amounted to BGN 5.202 billion, according to preliminary data from the National Statistical Institute (NSI).

For comparison, in the period from January to December 2019 the foreign trade balance (exports FOB - imports CIF) was in the red by BGN 7.530 billion, which means that the decrease is nearly 31%.