SOFIA, Bulgaria, Aug. 18 (UPI) -- Bulgaria's gross domestic product in the second quarter dropped 4.8 percent compared with the same period last year, the statistics office said.
The Bulgarian economy began registering declines in the last quarter of 2008 when its GDP fell 1.6 percent, followed by a drop of 3.5 percent in the first three months of this year.
The second-quarter decline was attributed mainly to poor output in the industrial and farming sectors, the Bulgarian news agency SNA reported Tuesday quoting statistics data.
Kristofor Pavlov, an expert on the economy at UniCredit Bulgaria Bank, has predicted the country's GDP is likely to fall further, though at a slower pace, through 2010 before turning around in 2011.
The Bulgarian economy is likely to recover from the global financial crisis at the slowest pace of all post-communist countries, said an analysis of the UniCredit Group published last week.
The analysis predicted Bulgaria's GDP will shrink 6 percent for all of 2009 and in 2010 will decline 3 percent. The Bulgarian economy is expected to register a growth of 2.5 percent in 2011.
