The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development<\/strong> (EBRD) has raised its forecast for economic growth in Bulgaria in 2019 while leaving its forecast for growth in 2020 unchanged.<\/p>\n In a regular report on regional economic prospects, for November 2019, the EBRD said that its forecast for economic growth in Bulgaria in 2019 was now 3.7 percent,<\/strong> up by 0.3 percent from its forecast in May. Its forecast for 2020 was for three percent growth.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The EBRD said that the Bulgarian economy grew robustly at 4.2 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2019.<\/strong><\/p>\n Household consumption continued to be the main source of growth<\/strong>, fuelled by strong lending activity, increased earnings and a higher employment rate amid the tightening labor market.<\/p>\n Unemployment was down<\/strong> to almost four percent as of June 2019, while nominal wages kept growing at high single-digit rates.<\/p>\n The government raised<\/strong> the monthly minimum wage by 10 percent in January 2019, to 286 euros.<\/p>\n Investment<\/strong> also continued to contribute positively to growth,<\/strong> although at a slower pace than in 2018, the EBRD said.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, net exports also boosted growth<\/strong>, as exports grew at a faster rate than imports, which almost stagnated.<\/p>\n Government spending rose in 2019<\/strong>, mainly due to a one-off large army-related expense, and the budget may be in deficit after three consecutive years of budget surpluses.<\/p>\n Public debt stands at around 21 percent of GDP, one of the lowest percentages in the EU.<\/p>\n The economy is expected to grow<\/strong> by a solid 3.7 percent in 2019 and 3.0 percent in 2020, broadly in line with the country\u2019s current growth potential, the EBRD said.<\/p>\n Growth<\/strong> is likely to be underpinned by private consumption<\/strong>, which typically fuels economic activity.<\/p>\n Investment<\/strong> should also contribute positively to growth<\/strong>, as the absorption of EU funds is accelerated towards the end of the 2014-20 funding period and the government embarks on a major energy investment cycle.<\/p>\n Key risks to the outlook are prolonged weakness of major trading partners, particularly that of the eurozone, and an exacerbation of current labor shortages, the EBRD said.<\/p>\n Source: https:\/\/sofiaglobe.com\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" EBRD raises forecast for economic growth in Bulgaria in 2019 The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has raised…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11708,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[209],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13314","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sr-blog-bulgaria-news-he"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sr-management.bg\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sr-management.bg\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sr-management.bg\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sr-management.bg\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sr-management.bg\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sr-management.bg\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sr-management.bg\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sr-management.bg\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sr-management.bg\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sr-management.bg\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}