Milen Velushev
THE PROBLEM WITH ECONOMIC GROWTH IN BULGARIA: CAN FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT HELP
Summary:
The Bulgarian economy has consistently ranked as one of the last among the EU countries regarding national competitiveness and factor productivity. Currently, its growth is modest and cannot qualify as a catch-up. A number of analyses have been dedicated to this topic, the results indicating various qualitative and quantitative factors or their aggregates as the cause for this lagging behind. This paper is an attempt to find out whether net foreign direct investment can help to improve the economic growth in Bulgaria. The analysis by Granger regarding the causality relationship between the GDP components and foreign direct investment inflows makes it clear that FDI affects not only government spending, which suggests that they cannot cause a change in the political institutions that determine the economic institutions. In short, at present foreign direct investment cannot be considered a source of economic growth due to the lack of investment in strengthening the market mechanisms by government.
