Bulgarian economy was expected to grow by 6.5 per cent year-on-year in the third quarter of the year while full-year growth would reach 6.4 per cent as of the end of this year, the Centre for Economic Development (CED) said in a third-quarter report released November 8 2007.

During the same period a year ago, the economy grew by 6.7 per cent in the third quarter of 2006 and 6.1 per cent in full-year 2006.
According to the CED, industrial sector growth would be decelerating gradually. Already in the July-September period, the pace of sales growth has gone down as against the pace of production growth at 8.5 per cent and 8.7 per cent in the third quarter and the first eight months of the year. The load factor of industrial premises has gone down from 75 per cent in October last year to 70 per cent in July this year.

Investments have reported the quickest growth since 2001, at 29.6 per cent. Household consumption also reported high growth rates at 6.8 per cent.
The processing industry was also reporting high growth rates. Its added value rose by 15 per cent in real terms versus 14.5 per cent in the first quarter of the year.

The financial mediation sector continued to report 40 per cent growth rate in the third quarter, the CED notes.
During the first half of the year, consumption increased from six to 6.1 per cent in the first half of the year. Growth in the second quarter of the year was at 5.2 per cent, slower than in the first quarter of the year (seven per cent) and during the same period a year ago (7.2 per cent).

During the first eight months of the year, foreign direct investments came in at 3.4 billion euros, which was a 22 per cent year-on-year growth. The rate of growth was expected to be sustained through year-end and the annual FDI volume would surpass five billion euros. It is worth noting that the share FDI in real estate is atop of the ranking at 35 per cent. Second and third-rated are production (25 per cent) and financial brokerage (20 per cent).