Inflation in Bulgaria is 0.3 – 0.4 points away from eurozone finish line

Bulgaria will meet the eurozone inflation criterion but not before next year. The country’s inflation rate continues to approach the acceptable threshold for the currency union, but according to the latest data for this year, it is still 0.3 - 0.4 points away from it.

The data in question is the Eurostat report on average annual inflation for the period December 2023 - November 2024 - the indicator used by the ECB and the European Commission for the convergence assessment.

According to the models of the Ministry of Finance and the Bulgarian National Bank, Bulgaria can meet the criterion at the earliest using data from December, which, however, will be published in the middle of next month. At the moment, this is the only requirement that Bulgaria does not meet in order to achieve membership in the eurozone.

Overall, recent months show that Bulgaria's inflation index is slowing down - to 2.8%. At the same time, the same indicator in Europe is holding steady - in November, on average, inflation in the three "best performing" countries was 0.93%, the same as in October. Therefore, the permissible level for the criterion also remains at 2.43% or 0.37 points below the values ​​in Bulgaria.

The three countries with the lowest inflation in the European Union this month are Finland, Lithuania and Italy.

Without Finland

In their June report, the European Central Bank and the European Commission excluded Finland from their calculations due to “exceptional factors.” If we exclude that country again in the calculations and add the next country with the lowest inflation – Latvia - then the permissible inflation limit becomes 2.47, or 0.33 points below the values ​​in Bulgaria.

Translated by Tzvetozar Vincent Iolov