site.btaInstitute for Market Economics Presents Study on Bulgarian Economic Centres
The Institute for Market Economics (IME) presented Tuesday in Sofia its study Economic Centres of Bulgaria – 2023. IME’s Executive Director Svetla Kostadinova pointed out that the identification of economic centres creates a new approach to analyzing the situation in Bulgaria.
Sixteen major economic centres stand out in Bulgaria, covering a total of 132 municipalities. Nearly three quarters of the country's population lives in these sixteen economic centres and more than 80% of Bulgaria's economic activity is concentrated within them.
IME’s Senior Research Fellow Petar Ganev presented the study and said that every economic centre consists of a core and a periphery. The economic cores are the municipalities with the strongest local economies, and their peripheries are the municipalities most closely tied to the economy of that core. "Some of the sixteen centres have more than one core, which is the result of existing interconnections between the different cores within the centre and the existence of a common periphery or zone of influence," Ganev explained.
IME Economist Adrian Nikolov added that Sofia is a leader among the country's economic centres. Its periphery includes 30 municipalities, which are home to nearly 1.7 million people. The capital has two secondary cores - Pernik and Blagoevgrad. Plovdiv, Varna, Stara Zagora, Ruse and Burgas also rank as major economic centres, Nikolov noted.
The study draws on data from the reports of non-financial enterprises as well as data from the 2021 census, which allows to track daily labour migration between municipalities in Bulgaria.
"Nearly BGN 90 billion of output is produced in Sofia, while the remaining BGN 37 billion of output is produced outside the capital throughout the country," Ganev reported.
The study is supported by the America for Bulgaria Foundation.
/RY/
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