Over the past year, Bulgaria had witnessed strong growth, increase of foreign direct investment flow and a sustainable decrease in unemployment, Financial Times said in an article released on Friday.

Foreign banks have been fighting against each other to grant loans to the emerging middle class on the lookout for newly-built apartments and equipment-related consumer loans. Foreigners were also keen on acquiring property in Bulgaria, the article read.
Furthermore, first payments from EU structural funds would start coming from next year onwards, which would help Bulgaria start the long catch-up process with richer EU member states.

FT warned that Bulgaria might be among the economies to suffer a credit crunch as the loan base is still growing at too fast a pace.
The fast loan expansion had pushed the current account deficit in the first six months of the year to 2.5 billion euros, which represented 10.6 per cent of GDP. This meant that Bulgaria is expected to end the year with the record 19 per cent of GDP.