Bulgarian Economy Grows By 7% In January-september

Bulgaria's economy grew by seven per cent year-on-year in the first nine months of 2008, in real terms, to 48.04 billion leva or 24.56 billion euro, provisional data from the National Statiscal Institute showed on December 15.Gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the third quarter of the year edged down to 6.8 per cent, or 18.61 billion leva, compared to the 7.1 per cent recorded in April-June.Per capita GDP in the third quarter was 2430 leva or 1242.2 euro, while for the first nine months of the year the per capita figure was 6271 leva or 3207 euro.Economic growth was helped by a strong showing from the agriculture sector, helped by a bumper harvest, recording a 44.3 rise over the same period of 2007, when farmers were repeatedly hit by floods and drought. The share of the sector in the final GDP figure increased from 7.3 per cent to 9.6 per cent.Services accounted for half of the total GDP, growing by 6.4 per cent in January-September.The industrial sector rose by 2.1 per cent over the first nine months of the year, compared to the same period of 2007, but as a share of the economy, it continued losing weight and accounted for a quarter of the final GDP figure, a decrease of 1.4 percentage points from the same period of last year.Total consumption recovered from a slowdown in the first half of the year, recording 5.4 per cent growth in the third quarter, compared to 4.7 per cent over the first six months. Household consumption growth was 5.9 per cent in the quarter, compared to 5.5 per cent in the first half of the year.Bulgaria's trade gap in January-Septermber rose 24.3 per cent year-on-year to 10.29 billion leva, the equivalent of 21.4 per cent of GDP.The Cabinet targets 6.4 per cent economic growth for 2008, the same target it set last year, when end-year GDP growth was 6.2 per cent.