News

Shortly after the end of the state of emergency in the country, an IME team held a working meeting with over 20 mayors of town halls and deputy mayors from the villages in the municipality of Gabrovo. During the conversation it was commented several times that the pandemic has led to a revival in the villages and to an increase in registrations at the current address. Months later, we decided to verify this statement by comparing it with official data. For this purpose, we use the quarterly data on the population from GRAO and compare the data by settlements as of March 15 and June 15, 2020.

The preparation of the budget of Sofia Municipality for 2021 will be a challenge for several reasons. In the first place is the lack of a developed macroeconomic framework for 2021 at the national level. In second place is the uncertainty surrounding the implementation of the 2020 budget and the possible need for a second update at the end of the year. Thirdly, it is due to the ambiguity of the development of the pandemic and the danger of a new series of quarantine measures on economic life.

The public health crisis of recent months has brought to the fore a number of health system problems. Among them is the provision of appropriate staff and equal access to health care. However, as these problems do not affect the individual districts of the country equally, the current text focuses in greater detail on the access to specialists in the different districts of Bulgaria.

Half a year after the beginning of the state of emergency and the accompanying economic crisis, the labor market is showing signs of recovery. However, regional dynamics in unemployment levels reveal deepening problems at the municipal level.

This year passes in the conditions of some significant events that dominate the economic and public agenda in our country - the admission to ERM II, the pandemic and the economic crisis, the protests and the resignations of the government and the Prosecutor General. Along with these topics, however, there are other processes that are also of great importance for the development of the country. This is exactly the case with the regional planning for the next 7 years (for the period 2021-2027), which will predetermine the trajectory of development of the municipalities and regions in our country.

With the beginning of the new school year next week, we turn our attention to the teaching staff in the schools and their distribution on the regional map. The ratio of the number of teachers to the number of students at the municipal level is a sign of the ability of the local education system to organize a normal educational process.

On the economic map of Bulgaria, Stara Planina is the big divider. While to the south of it, along the Trakia highway, there is a practically continuous belt of highly developed areas, to the north there are several unconnected "islands" of more violent activity. The upswing at the end of the previous decade has had a beneficial effect on some of the northern local economies, especially Gabrovo and Varna, but others have lagged behind - in investment, income and poverty. Here we focus on two such northern districts - Shumen and Targovishte, whose economic trajectory largely overlaps in the period after the last great crisis.