site.btaBulgarian National Bank Forecasts Steady Economic Growth in First Half of 2026

Bulgarian National Bank (BNB) expects Bulgaria’s real gross domestic product (GDP) to continue growing steadily on an annual basis in the first half of 2026, at rates close to those recorded in the first half of 2025. The projection is included in the summary of the central bank’s quarterly publication Economic Review, published on its website on Wednesday.

The BNB forecasts a slowdown in domestic demand growth, but economic activity will continue to be supported by all of its components – primarily private consumption, followed by investment in fixed capital and government consumption.

The central bank also expects exports of goods and services to recover in the first half of the year as the factors that constrained them in 2025 are gradually exhausted. Nevertheless, given the slowdown in external demand for Bulgarian goods and services in the first and second quarters of 2026 and the anticipated increase in imports, the BNB expects the contribution of net exports to economic activity to remain negative.

Regarding inflation, the BNB notes that regular business surveys conducted by the National Statistical Institute indicate that in December 2025 the share of managers in the services and industrial sectors who expect selling prices to rise over the next three months increased compared with both the previous month and December 2024.

This may signal an acceleration of inflation in the core components of the consumer basket in the short term and corresponds to the observed strengthening price pressures along the supply chain, the publication says.

In view of current trends, the technical assumptions regarding international commodity price dynamics, and the projected developments in the labour market and domestic economic activity, the central bank expects inflation to ease slightly in the first half of 2026.

In its latest macroeconomic forecast, the BNB projects that inflation, measured by the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices, will reach 3.6% at the end of 2026.