BULGARIA

Bulgaria is one of the Catching-up countries with an innovation performance well below the EU27 average but the rate of improvement is one of the highest of all countries and it is a growth leader within the Catching-up countries. Relative strengths, compared to the country’s average performance, are in Human resources, Finance and support and Economic effects and relative weaknesses are in Linkages & entrepreneurship and Throughputs.

Over the past 5 years, Throughputs and Finance and support have been the main drivers of the improvement in innovation performance, in particular as a result from strong growth in Private credit (19.8%), Broadband access by firms (22.0%), Community trademarks (69.6%) and Community designs (24.1%). Performance in Economic effects has hardly grown, in particular due to a decrease in New-to-market sales (-5.7%) and New-to-firm sales (-3.1%).