Bulgaria’s economy was set to grow by 3.3 per cent this year after the estimated 5.1 per cent drop suffered in 2020 as a result of the Covid-19 global pandemic, according to the latest World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects report, released on 6 January.
The report also projected 3.7 per cent economic growth in 2022. Compared to the June 2020 report, the World Bank appeared to suggest that the post-Covid rebound would be steeper than it projected earlier, with this year’s growth forecast at 1.1 percentage points higher than the previous estimate, while growth in 2022 would be one percentage point lower.
But the country was expected to underperform the World Bank’s forecast for the Central Europe sub-region – which in addition to Bulgaria includes fellow EU member states Croatia, Hungary, Poland and Romania – which is expected to grow by 3.6 per cent as a whole in 2021 and 4.2 per cent in 2022, after shrinking by an estimated 4.4 per cent last year.