site.btaSofia Pulls Farther Away from Other Bulgarian Regions in Economic Development, Think-Tank Says

The economic gap between Sofia and the rest of Bulgaria grew further in 2024, when the capital's gross domestic product (GDP) reached EUR 35,400 per capita. Due to the fact that Sofia City, which is a separate administrative region, has a rather high share in the national economy, only one other region, Stara Zagora, with its GDP at EUR 22,400 per capita, was above the country's average level in 2024, says Adrian Nikolov, senior economist at the Institute for Market Economics (IME), in an analysis published on the IME website on February 13.

Nikolov says that Varna and Vratsa (both EUR 15,200 per capita) came next in the year's ranking, and the top-five group was completed by Plovdiv (EUR 13,100). The region of Sliven trailed the table with EUR 6,700, and Silistra, Haskovo and Montana also stood below the EUR 8,000 mark. GDP levels in half of Bulgaria's 28 regions were between EUR 9,000 and EUR 12,000 per capita in the reporting year, which shows an absence of major disparities within a large portion of the country, the expert notes.

According to him, the distribution of gross value added (GVA) supports the conclusion that services account for an ever-larger share in the stronger regional economies, while agriculture is a more significant sector in less developed parts of the country.

After Bulgaria overcame the combined effect of the collapse of tourism in the period 2020-2021 and the energy crisis of 2022-2023, the pace of economic growth went back to normal, the analysis goes. Still, the dynamics differed from region to region. The highest nominal growth (not adjusted for price changes) in 2024 was reported in Stara Zagora (19% annually), Plovdiv (16%) and Sofia City (13%). Alarmingly, nominal GDP decreased in the regions of Sliven, Lovech and Montana, while growth in Gabrovo, Sofia Region and Razgrad was under or around the average annual inflation rate, which means a decline in real terms. These uneven changes increased the risk that the gap between the frontrunners and the laggards in terms of economic development and incomes could widen further, the analyst warns.

The difference between the level of economic development in the national capital and the least developed region in the country was 5.3-fold in 2024, compared with 4.8-fold in 2023. Looking back to the more distant past, in 2000 the gap was slightly under 3-fold, meaning that economic divergence has deepened over the medium term. At the same time, the standard deviation of GDP per capita – a measure of the distance between individual regions in terms of their economic development – has increased more than 10-fold in 25 years. Over half of this effect is due to the capital pulling away, once again highlighting its exceptional economic success compared to the other regions, Nikolov says.

He notes that the observation is supported by the changing economic weight of individual regions. In 2024, it was highly concentrated, with Sofia creating EUR 46 billion in GDP (44% of Bulgaria's total), Plovdiv EUR 8.3 billion (8%), Varna and Stara Zagora generating 6% each, and Burgas 4%. Nine regions, mainly in the north of the country, contributed less than 1% each to national GDP. Back in 2000, the share of the capital was 26%, and there was no region contributing less than 1%. The shares of the secondary nuclei did not change much over the period, with Plovdiv's weight growing from 7.4% in 2000 to 8% in 2024, Varna's remaining unchanged at 6.3%, and Stara Zagora's rising from 5.3% to 6.2%. In other words, Sofia's weight has increased at the expense of the smallest and least developed regional economies.

The growing economic gap between the Bulgarian capital and the other regions of the country is not surprising, Nikolov says. The factors driving the process are absolutely clear: huge disparities in investment size, human capital, population potential, infrastructure standards and local authorities' effectiveness. Improving any single prerequisite for growth outside Sofia will not be enough in itself to narrow the differences. But targeted efforts, with the right focus, can remove many obstacles and boost the potential for higher growth even in the least developed regions of the country, the analyst concludes.