06.06.2011

The Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Bulgaria has just released its bulletin: \"The Balkan countries: Economic dynamics and short-term expectations 2007-2012\". The main goal of the Policy Insight is to highlight key recent developments in and near-term expectations on the Western Balkan economies and Turkey during the period 2007-2012.

Focusing on Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, FYR Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey, in its first part, the Insight uses EU-27 economic indicator averages as a backdrop, to summarize key macroeconomic and fiscal indicator dynamics characterizing the six economies during the period 2007-2012. In its second part, the bulletin looks in more detail into the economic performance and perspectives of each of the six countries. Attention is paid to the structure of the economies, their public finance performance and EU membership negotiation progress. 

The main findings of the Insight are:

• Albeit achieving high pre-crisis economic growth rates, averaging 6.5% in 2007 and 4.5% in 2008 - well above the EU level - the six economies suffered a strong contraction in 2009. GDP dropped by an average of 2,8% in 2009. The contraction is much smaller than the one of the EU, though, which exceeds -4% in 2009. The subsequent recovery of the Balkan countries, however, remains fragile and uneven.
• Economic growth is expected to accelerate within the group in 2011 and 2012, with medium-term growth rates expected to substantially exceed the average growth rate of the EU by 2012.
• In the period 2007-2010, the budget deficit of the six Вalkan countries increased from -0.2% to -3.8% of GDP. In the same period, the budget gap in the EU grew from -0.9% to -6.4% of GDP. This trend is expected to persist in the coming years, despite the fiscal consolidation efforts of EU member states.
• During the period 2007-2010 the six economies carried government debt levels below the EU average. Despite a sharp increase in the debt stock of some of the Balkan countries by up to 8% of GDP (to a total of 42% of GDP) in the three years, debt remained significantly below the EU average of 80% of GDP in 2010. Debt levels are expected to remain stable in the medium term.
• Some of the major risks affecting the medium-term prospects of the Western Balkan and Turkish economies at present have to do with the stability of the banking sector sand maintained high inflation levels.

The analysis builds on official historic data provided by Eurostat and the European Commission (EC) for the period 2007-2010, and on forecast data for 2011 and 2012 provided by the IMF and the EC.