NSI and Eurostat smashed some pre-election pillars to dust, Lachezar Borisov reported on Facebook

Lachezar Borisov was born in 1978 in the town of Samokov.

Graduated with honors from "Konstantin" high school from GERB-SDS

The Union of Democratic Forces (SDS) is a Bulgarian right-wing political party, the successor of. 

A few weeks ago, a number of politicians were bragging, probably pre-election, about incredible achievements for Bulgaria's economic growth in the second quarter of 2022 and for the successfully implemented economic development policy.

According to them, during this period, Bulgaria was in 4th place in terms of economic growth.

Unfortunately, the public was lied to again and today Eurostat and NSI refuted the conclusions of the "boasting" politicians and actually showed where Bulgaria is and what our level of development was compared to other EU member states.

What did Eurostat and NSI tell us?

• Economic growth in Bulgaria in the second quarter of 2022, according to seasonally adjusted data, is not 4.8%, but 4%.

• Bulgaria is not in 4th place in terms of annual growth, but occupies the unenviable 17th place in the EU, provided that we do not yet have data for Luxembourg.

• Economic growth in Bulgaria on an annual basis is lower than the average for the EU and the Eurozone, i.e.

we are again among the underperformers.

Over 75% of Bulgarians have difficulty covering their daily expenses

NSI data on the structure of economic growth confirmed some of my predictions and conclusions, namely:

• Investments in fixed capital in the second quarter of 2022 collapsed by 7.8% on an annual basis, with an acceleration of the decline compared to the previous quarter.

This negative trend has been going on for a whole year now and it clearly shows that business is not investing, that we lost a lot of time with investments under the Recovery and Resilience Plan, and that the state stopped public investment in infrastructure.

• Growth rates of individual consumption are decreasing and indicate problems with the purchasing power of the population.

• Real import growth was 16.7%, while real export growth was over 6 points lower or 10.4%.

This further confirms the thesis of the declining contribution of net exports to growth.

• The analysis of GDP by the production method further confirms some of the conclusions I made earlier, namely that:

o Growth in the country is not driven by overall industrial development, but is provoked by the extractive industry, in particular coal mining, the high added value that is created by the electricity sector and less by the recovered manufacturing industry.

These are also the reasons on the basis of which the three sectors in the structure of the added value grew by 11.9%.

o The analysis of the added value also confirms the facts that the state missed the opportunities under the Recovery and Sustainability Plan, as well as that all infrastructure projects were stopped.

This is evident from the drop in value added in the construction sector by 16.4% in real terms.

The reduced growth and weak performance of Bulgaria in the second quarter of 2022, against the background of the other EU member states, give rise to a number of questions related to the upcoming management of public finances in the coming years, which I will raise further.

Lachezar Borisov

COAT OF ARMS

SDS