Bulgaria's central bank

Bulgaria is on a tight five-month deadline to fulfill the prerequisites necessary to join the eurozone by January 2025, revealed Deputy Minister of Finance Ivaylo Yajdjiev on January 19. The primary criteria involve lowering the inflation rate and adopting the BNB law to align Bulgaria's central bank with European standards.

In its regular quarterly economic review, the Bulgarian National Bank predicts that the country's gross domestic product will register a decrease of 4.4 percent for 2020.

In the previous forecast in September, the expected fall in GDP was 5.5%.

Bulgaria's central bank BNB has adopted the guidelines approved by the European Banking Authority for private moratoria on payments in light of the Covid-19 crisis, BNR reported.

Bulgaria's central bank has given Hungary's OTP Bank the green light to buy Societe Generale's Bulgarian businesses, the central bank said in a statement on Wednesday, reports Reuters. 

Bulgaria's central bank said on Monday that 10 of the Black Sea state's 22 commercial banks would have to adopt extra protective capital buffers as Sofia seeks to join the euro bloc, reports Reuters. 

SOFIA (Bulgaria), July 31 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria's First Investment Bank (Fibank) [BUL:5F4] said that its non-consolidated net profit rose to 45.4 million levs ($23.2 million/27.2 million euro) in the first half of 2018 from 40.6 million levs in the like period of last year.

The court sitting on the case for siphoning off of more than BGN 2 and a half billion from the Corporate Commercial Bank on 28th of February continues for second day In the Specialised Court. The former banker and majority shareholder of the bank, Tzvetan Vassilev, and other 17 people are defendants in the process, charged as an organised criminal group.

Bulgaria's central bank is gearing up to enforce stricter rules intended to help reduce non-performing loans (NPLs) at the country's banks by the end of the year, deputy central bank governor Dimitar Kostov said on Wednesday.

''The banking sector in Bulgaria is stabilised after the problems we had in 2014 and bankrupcy of the country's 4th-largest credit institution - Corporate Commercial Bank due to fraud and internal misappropriation, but bad loans remain a challenge according to reports by the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission'', the governor of Bulgarian National Bank (BNB), Dimitar Radev,

The Bulgarian Industrial Association (BIA) has warned the country ranks last in the size of foreign investment drawn by EU member states.

In an interview with public radio BNR, BIA Chairman Bozhidar Danev has added investment into the country is "mainly based on public money and EU funds."