site.btaCentral Bank Sets Base Interest Rate at 1.81% from December 1 in Final Adjustment Before Bulgaria's Eurozone Entry

The Bulgarian National Bank (BNB) Friday set the base interest rate (simple per annum interest) at 1.81% as of December 1, according to its website. It is valid until the end of the calendar month.

This is the last adjustment before Bulgaria's eurozone entry on January 1, 2026. As of that date, interest rates and bank reference rates will be set at eurozone level.

From January 1, Bulgaria will compute the statutory interest on late payments using the ECB's main refinancing rate instead of the base interest rate, according to a draft Cabinet decree published for public consultation earlier in November. Under the proposal, the annual statutory interest on overdue obligations will equal the ECB's rate, effective January 1 and July 1, plus 8 percentage points.

Until now, the statutory interest was calculated as the base interest rate plus 10 percentage points.

The simple annual interest for December 2025 rises by 0.01 percentage points compared with November, when it stood at 1.80%.

The BNB Governing Council decided at its November 27 meeting that, in view of the introduction of the euro as the national currency and the cessation of lev-denominated cashless transactions and operations from January 1, 2026, the central bank will discontinue computing and publishing the LEONIA Plus reference rate and setting the base interest rate, the central bank said earlier in the day.

LEONIA Plus has been computed and published by BNB on every business day since July 1, 2017. It is a weighted average of the interest rates on all concluded overnight unsecured lending transaction in BGN in the interbank market in Bulgaria.