site.btaBulgaria: From "Tomato Republic" to Tomato-Hungry Market

Once called a "tomato republic", Bulgaria has come to rely heavily on imports to meet its tomato consumption needs. The country used to be famous for its agriculture, feeding a Soviet bloc of over 300 million people with its fresh and canned tomatoes. Today, it is the only Balkan nation which imports more tomatoes than bananas, Bulgarian Industrial Association (BIA) expert Borislav Georgiev says in an analysis on Bulgaria's foreign trade in 2018-2022, published on the BIA website.

According to the analysis, Bulgaria's deficit of energy resources has doubled over the five-year period, causing the national economy to suffer a major blow, and yet, the problem is not as grave as in other EU member states. If the Chaira Pumped Storage Power Plant in Southwestern Bulgaria was operational, it would have helped the country go through the energy crisis even more easily, Georgiev argues. Chaira used to supply more than 400 GWh of electricity to the market annually, but a malfunction has left it out of order since March 2022.

The export-to-import ratio shows that the Bulgarian economy is highly open, the analysis goes. Bulgaria's trade deficit with Russia, China and Turkey each doubled between 2018 and 2022. In four of the five years, Bulgarian exports to North Macedonia surpassed exports to Russia.