Borrowing in Bulgaria

The three rates, and which question each answers

The first is the rate the monthly payment is worked out from. The second is the APRC, the annual percentage rate of charge: the same loans with the fees the bank requires in order to lend, so it is higher, and it is not the one the payment is worked out from. The third is not for a new loan at all: agreements signed years ago are in it too.

How that rate has moved

This is the third rate above, month by month. It moves slowly because it averages the whole outstanding book of old and new agreements: when the market falls, it shows here only as the older loans are repaid or repriced. The peak is 9.00% in November 2008, and the latest reading is 2.65%.

BNB · January 2007 – August 2026 · euro rates before 2026 were reconstructed by BNB from the lev and euro reporting, not observed at the time

How long the rate is fixed for

BNB count variable-rate loans and loans fixed for up to a year as one bucket, and say so in a footnote under the table. So the first row below does not mean the rate is fixed for a year, but that the bank may change it within a year.

The share has never once fallen below 84.0% in the period BNB publish, and its lowest reading is December 2022. Rates across Europe were rising then and some borrowers did fix.

BNB · January 2007 – August 2026 · the share is of the volume of new lending, not of the number of agreements, and the euro figures before 2026 were reconstructed by BNB from the lev and euro reporting

How much of new lending is an old loan

In the statistics, new business means any new agreement, and repricing an existing loan is an agreement too. The ECB report the two apart, while headlines about a record month of home lending do not.

How far a loan is allowed to go

The first three have been in force since 1 Oct 2024 and bind every bank in the country. The last is not a requirement but a measurement: that is how much of their income people who borrowed recently put towards the payment. The calculator here stops calling a payment bearable above 30% of net income, stricter than the BNB ceiling and than what those borrowers carry. That line does not move.

BNB · the observed ratio

How much households owe

The ECB publish what the debt costs but not how large it is. So the rate is theirs and the amount beside it is BNB's. That the two describe the same loans is checked on every refresh.

BNB · January 2007 – August 2026 · euro amounts before 2026 were reconstructed by BNB from the lev and euro reporting, not observed at the time

The overdraft row includes credit cards, because BNB report them inside it rather than beside it, so the four rows add up to the total above with nothing counted twice. How much is owed on cards specifically is below, beside what a card costs.

What households have and what they owe

1.75 € in the bank for every euro owed. In January 2022 it was 2.30 €. Ours: the money in the bank divided by the debt, for the same month.

ECB · January 2022 – August 2026 · the ECB only have these two figures for Bulgaria from January 2022 onward. The debt goes back further, but the chart stops it here: two lines that start in different years cannot be compared

The debt here is 2.3% larger than the total in the table above, and both figures are right. BNB and the ECB count slightly different things: BNB count households alone, while the ECB count the non-profits that serve them too, meaning community centres, churches and trade unions. So both amounts here are the ECB's, and the ratio divides like by like.

What you pay for money, and what you are paid

The home itself stands behind a home loan, which is why it is usually the cheapest way to borrow.

For cards, the amount is only what interest actually runs on: the money left unpaid after the interest-free period. Far more than that is spent on cards, but most of it is paid back in time and costs nothing. For overdrafts we took the cards out: the rate above the amount is the ECB's and does not cover cards.

Which of these prices changed

The consumer loan reached 10.03% in December 2024 and is 8.91% now. The card rate starts the period at 19.93% and ends at 21.55%. A new home loan starts at 2.97% and ends at 2.42%.

ECB · January 2020 – August 2026 · these are the rates on agreements signed in each month, not on what you are already repaying; through 2025 they are the lev lending and from 2026 the euro lending. The overdraft and the deposits are not on the chart: the overdraft moves with the home loan, and the deposit rates are only published from January 2026

What a company pays, and what a homebuyer pays

The two rates are set in different ways, and are under no obligation to move together.

+1.94 points apart in August 2026. Ours: the company rate minus the home loan rate, for the same month. Across the whole period it runs between −0.27 points in May 2022 and +2.09 points in June 2026.

They come apart because of where the money comes from. The ECB sets the price of money in the euro area. But Bulgarian banks have no need to borrow dear: households hold more in them than they owe them, and a current account pays 0.01%. So a change in the ECB's rate reaches a loan to a company sooner than it reaches a home loan.

The two loans are not the same thing, and a gap between them is normal.

ECB · January 2020 – August 2026 · the rates on agreements signed in each month. Both follow the currency of the day: the lev before the euro was adopted and the euro after it. A loan to a company is for any purpose where a home loan is only for buying a home, because the ECB publish no purpose split for company lending. The chart starts at January 2020 because that is the first month both rates are here for.

How much of it is not being repaid

When a single figure for bad loans turns up in the news, it is usually for all the banks' lending at once. That is the third figure here, not the first. It puts company and household lending together, and the three figures above say which part is which.

These are quarterly and land about five months after the quarter they describe, so they are older than every rate on this page. The percentage is taken over every loan to those same borrowers. BNB publish a figure of their own in their supervisory report; it is worked out differently and does not match these.

ECB · Q1 2020 – Q1 2026