LM Legal Services Blog

The Bulgarian Economy will grow of only 1.5% in 2011, according to analysts. Earlier forecasts predicted a growth of 2.6%. However, the expectations are for a decrease of the export and a negative impact on the labour market.
The slowing down of the growth of Bulgaria’s GDP is due to the negative perspectives for the Euro zone economy and the expected sharp drop of the investment in Bulgaria in the third quarter of 2011.
The analysts expect additional decrease of the balance of the corporate sector. The export which has been the stabilizing factor of the Bulgarian economy is expected to shrink and to put under a risk the already stabilizing labour market.
It is expected that Bulgaria will avoid the second recession because the balance of the public sector remains strong, while the export demand is steadily decreasing, although it is far from the sharp drop experienced in the beginning of 2009. The growth of the Bulgarian economy is expected to return to normal levels in two-three years time.

According to the analysts, there are three tendencies concerning the commercial property market in Bulgarian in 2012.
The first one is that the number of buil-to-suit industrial centres has increased due to the increased volume of outsourcing of light industrial production from Western Europe into Bulgaria. Bulgaria is attractive with low taxation and low cost of labour.
The second tendency is that the relocation of companies into newly build office centres has intensified due to the fact that the owners offer 5 to 7 year rental contracts at attractive prices and this allows the companies to cut costs during the recession.
The third tendency is that six new shopping centres are under construction throughout Bulgaria and of them three will open in 2012 – Bulgaria Mall, Paradise Centre and a new mall in Bourgas.

The Bulgarian National Statistics Institute has announced that from July to September 2011 the Bulgarian GDP has increased BY 0.3% in comparison with the previous quarter of 2011. In comparison with the same period of 2010, the growth is by 1.6%. Nevertheless, the Bulgarian economy is slowing down. In the first quarter of 2011 the growth of the GDP was 3.3%, while in the second it was 2%. According to the analysts in the beginning of 2012 the growth will slow down even more it will not enter into a recession.
In the last year the productivity of the Bulgarian economy was one of the best in Europe – exceeding 7%. Partially this was due to the lost of jobs, partially to increased production. The National Statistics Institute has announced that in the first quarter of this year the Bulgarians have increased their productivity by 5.9% on an annual basis. The highest increase was in industry, while the worst was in agriculture.

In 2011 the market of agricultural land in Bulgaria went back to the levels before the recession. 1 200 000 dka of land have been sold and only in July 124 000 sales took place. In 2008, which was the best year before the recession, in 122 000 deals were sold 1 240 000 dka of land.

The average price of the land is 345 levs (170 Euros) per dka, for comparison in 2010 it was 320 levs (160 Euros), while in 2008 – 350 levs (175 Euros).

According to analysts, agricultural land proved to be a stable asset in Bulgaria and this has attracted investors.

Due to the debt crisis in the Eurozone, the demand for mortgages in Bulgaria has shrunk. The size of the average mortgage has decreased in October 2011 in comparison with September 2011 according to the Bulgarian National Bank. The number of the repaid mortgages has exceeded the number of the new mortgages. This is the third decrease in the number of the new mortgages since the beginning of the recession. The previous two decreases took place in January 2009 and in January 2011, as the first month of the year is traditionally bad for lending. In the last three years only the number of the new mortgages has been steadily rising by about 2% on annual basis.
This third decrease was minimal – by only 340 000 levs (about 170 000 Euros) – but according to analysts it shows the decrease in the demand in the last two months. However, it occurred exactly at the climax of the active crediting season when banks are most active. The reason is the deepening debt crisis in the Eurozone.

The bad and the restructured credits reached 9.022 billion levs ( 4,5 billion Euros) or 22% of the credit portfolio, non-inclusive of the overdrafts. The increase in the last month was by 222 million levs (111 million Euros) due to the increase of the bad business credits by 172 million levs reaching 5.6 billion levs (2.7 billion Euros). The size of the unpaid or restructured mortgages is 1.7 billion levs and of the bad personal credits – 1.5 billion levs .
The total size of all credits lent both to businesses and individuals is 51.8 billion levs (25 billion Euros).