SOFIA (Bulgaria), June 2 (SeeNews) – Bulgaria's economy is expected to grow by around 4% in 2018, according to Christofor Pavlov, chief economist of UniCredit Bulbank, part of Italy's UniCredit Group.
“The expectations of households and business for April and May are close to the peak values recorded after the 2008 financial crisis and indicate that the economic activity will quicken in the second quarter of 2017,” Christofor Pavlov has said at financial conference in Sofia, according to a press release published by UniCredit Bulbank on Friday.
The tourism and civil engineering sectors will contribute to the quickening of Bulgaria’s GDP growth in the second half of 2017, he added.
According to Pavlov, Bulgaria is still trailing in terms of economic recovery following the 2008 financial crisis compared to other countries in the region, such as Romania.
However, Bulgaria’s growth is more balanced and is not achieved at the expense of increasing current account deficit and government debt, Pavlov said.
In January, UniCredit said it raised its projection for Bulgaria's economic growth in 2017 to 3.6%, 0.6 percentage points higher than the previous forecast made in September 2016. At the time, UniCredit projected Bulgaria’s GDP would grow by 3.4% in 2018.