site.btaCentral Bank Revises Up Growth Forecast for 2024, Scales Down Inflation Estimates for 2024-2026

The Bulgarian National Bank (BNB) on Thursday revised up its economic growth forecast for the country for 2024 and scaled down its annual-inflation estimates for 2024, 2025 and 2026. The changes are reported in the central bank’s updated macroeconomic forecast published on its website.

The BNB expects that Bulgaria’s gross domestic product (GDP) will grow by 2.2% in 2024, which is 0.1 percentage points higher than the June 2024 forecast. In 2025, GDP will grow by 2.7%, not 3.2% as predicted last time. The forecast for 2026 is now 3.4%, up by 0.5 percentage points.

The main growth factors in 2024 are private consumption and changing stocks, while the contributions of public investments and net exports are expected to be negative. The expected increase in consumer expenditures in 2024 will result mainly from rising employment and an increase in wages in real terms as well as larger social transfers to households, the bank says.

Concerning inflation, based on the harmonized index of consumer prices, the BNB updated its forecast for annual inflation in 2024 down to 1.9% from the June 2024 estimate of 2.2%. In 2025, annual inflation will rise to 2.5%, down from the previous forecast of 2.8%, and by the end of 2026 it will stand at 2.4% compared with a June 2024 prediction of 2.6%.