Adrian Nikolov

At the end of last week, the current proposal for changing the minimum wage level was published. It is interesting for several reasons, mainly because, for the first time, the new mechanism for determining the minimum wage is applied, linking it to the dynamics of the average wage. This, in the context of high inflation and the subsequent rapid growth of wages, leads to its largest nominal increase in the last two decades.

Already in May, the National Statistical Institute of Bulgaria announced long-awaited news: on a monthly basis, the general consumer price index recorded a decline for the first time since the beginning of the war, and in June, this trend continued, even more noticeably. This has also been accompanied by a cooling down of the annual price change, which has fallen well below its peak since autumn 2022.

It is no surprise that the annual address of President Vladimir Putin to the Russian people featured a call for self-sufficiency, the closing of the national economy, and catering to all needs only with internal resources. Even though the statements of foreign leaders are not directly linked to the Bulgarian context, such ideas can find their ground at home too, especially in the context of election campaigns.

Several years of caretaker governance, frequent elections, and inability to form a stable, legitimate, and broadly supported coalition suffice for breaking the spirit of many who believe Bulgaria could thrive as a proper democracy, and the result of the April 2023 general election also points in the same direction.

The Bulgarian population pyramid has essentially flipped since the beginning of the transition in the 1990s – back then the share of children (aged 15 and below) was 21% and the share of pensioners (65 and up) was 14%.

Once again, it has become clear that Bulgaria shall not be joining the Schengen agreement for some time, mostly due to the distrust in the work of our institutions and their ability to effectively guard the outer border of the visa-free area. Apart from the deeper European integration and the further inclusion to the \"rich country club,\" the accession to the Schengen Area could provide a couple of specific benefits to the Bulgarian economy.

In this article we look at the connection between industrial and consumer prices in Bulgaria in an attempt to determine to what extent the industrial price index can be used to forecast the future dynamics of consumer inflation.

The growing energy costs play an important role for the increase of the overall consumer price indices during the last couple months and threatens a maintenance of high inflation rates during the entire 2022.

After a turbulent year and a total of three general elections, Bulgaria finally has a government. Much like the new power in Germany, it is far from a stable, single-party rule but rather a patchy, colorful coalition of small powers and former enemies.

It is the summer of the second year of the COVID-19 panemic, and the European Union has generously opened its coffers to spend on post-pandemic recovery. Various governments of the EU are scrambling to put forward their best ideas to be funded by the new support scheme.