site.btaUPDATED AmCham EU Report: Bulgaria Exports USD 1.2 Bln Worth of Goods and USD 0.4 Bln Worth of Services to the U.S.

A new report from the American Chamber of Commerce in the European Union (AmCham EU) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce highlights that the key drivers of transatlantic economy, such as investment, trade and company earnings, are performing strongly in 2022. The report's data primarily concerns 2020 as well as 2021, and sources include the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the U.S. Department of Commerce, the International Monetary Fund, and the U.S. Office of Trade and Economic Analysis.

The report was presented at the AmCham EU Transatlantic Economy Conference, which was also attended by Ivan Mihaylov, CEO of the American Chamber of Commerce in Bulgaria, the chamber said Wednesday.

For another year, the data for Bulgaria show stable trade relations and opportunity for development.  The report indicates that the US investment in Bulgaria for 2022 is USD 0.2 billion - down by USD 756 million from the previous report. Bulgarian investment in America, meanwhile, stands at USD 50 million, up slightly from the USD 48 million reported previously. 

Jobs directly supported by majority-owned affiliates related to U.S. investments in Bulgaria reached 10,605 in 2021 (compared to 9,653 a year earlier), and U.S. jobs created by Bulgarian companies are now 306 compared to 281 in 2020.

In terms of trade, the U.S. exported goods to Bulgaria with a total value of USD 300 billion in 2021 (down from USD 375 billion reported in the previous year). The share of U.S. goods shipped to Bulgaria reached 0.7% of the total, which increases to 1.8% when intra-EU trade is removed.

In comparison, Bulgaria exported goods to the US worth a total of USD 1.2 billion (up from USD 848 million in 2020). Thus, the share of Bulgarian goods to the US amounts to 2.5% of the total volume of goods that Bulgaria exports to the world. This share rises to 7.3% when intra-EU trade is excluded.

Both indicators show a stable economic and trade relationship between the US and Bulgaria, while Bulgarian exports - both direct and via the EU - have grown significantly over the past year.

The top 5 commodities that the US exports to Bulgaria (in millions of USD) are: transport and equipment, computers and electronic products, machinery manufacturing, petroleum and coal products, and chemical products.

Similar to the bigger picture presented in the report, U.S. energy exports to Bulgaria have jumped more than 30-fold since 2000. This has not been reported since the 2022 report, the Chamber said, concluding that U.S. exports of LNG and other products to Europe and Bulgaria were driven by Russia's war in Ukraine and the subsequent shutdown of Russian gas supplies to Bulgaria, which had to change its sources of supply. This also applies to chemical production. There has also been steady growth in electronics and machinery. The missing segment from the 2022 report was mining equipment, which was at USD 31.9 million then.