Bulgaria

Bulgaria: Low Debt, NATO-Range Defense Spending

Bulgaria's GDP reached $113.34 billion in 2024, per World Bank WDI, with a population of 6,441,421 the same year and source. GDP per capita stood at $17,596.02 in 2024 (World Bank WDI).

Fiscally, Bulgaria looks comparatively strong: the IMF's World Economic Outlook projects government debt at 28.2 percent of GDP in 2026, a low ratio relative to the other figures in this file. Foreign reserves were reported at $41.09 billion in 2025, per IMF International Financial Statistics.

Defense spending came to $2.59 billion in 2025, per SIPRI's Military Expenditure Database, equivalent to 2.006 percent of GDP by SIPRI's own GDP series for that year — a ratio drawn entirely from SIPRI's series and not to be recalculated against the World Bank's 2024 GDP figure cited above. The Correlates of War National Material Capabilities dataset recorded 37,000 active personnel in 2022 and a Composite Index of National Capability score of 0.000925, also 2022.

V-Dem's 2025 release puts Bulgaria's electoral democracy index at 0.599, liberal democracy index at 0.499, and state capacity score at 0.56 — a middling profile across all three measures.

Data gaps

Energy statistics mix recent and stale vintages. Primary energy consumption was 0.6905 exajoules in 2024 and electricity generation 37.96 terawatt-hours in 2025, both per Our World in Data's Energy dataset, and reasonably current. Oil production, however, was 0.631 terawatt-hours and gas production 0.974 terawatt-hours, both dated to 2016 — nearly a decade old. These should be read strictly as the latest OWID entries available for Bulgaria, not as a description of current hydrocarbon output, which this bundle does not capture.

Reserves (2025, IMF IFS) and government debt (2026, IMF WEO) are drawn from different vintages than the GDP and population figures (2024, World Bank WDI); each should be read against the year attributed to it rather than treated as a single-year snapshot of the economy. The personnel and CINC figures (2022, Correlates of War) are similarly offset from the more recent defense-spending figures above and should not be combined into one composite year.

Sources: World Bank WDI, IMF WEO, IMF International Financial Statistics, SIPRI Milex, Correlates of War National Material Capabilities, V-Dem v15, Our World in Data (Energy).