BULGARIA



Republic of Bulgaria

Republika Bulgariya

CAPITAL : Sofia (Sofiya)

FLAG : The flag is a tricolor of white, green, and red horizontal stripes.

ANTHEM : Bulgariya mila, zemya na geroi (Dear Bulgaria, Land of Heroes).

MONETARY UNIT : The lev ( LV ) of 100 stotinki has coins of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, and 50 stotinki and 1 and 2 leva, and notes of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 leva. Lv1 = $0.5649 (or $1 = LV 1.77) as of May 2003.

WEIGHTS AND MEASURES : The metric system is the legal standard.

HOLIDAYS : New Year's Day, 1 January; Labor Days, 1–2 May; Education and Culture Day, 24 May; Christmas, 24–25 December.

TIME : 2 PM =noon GMT.


LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Bulgaria is divided into 28 provinces (oblasti). There are 262 municipalities, each of which is governed by a mayor and an elected council. Much of the country is rural, with a strong peasant culture. Bulgaria is currently undergoing a process of decentralization, which will better prepare it for accession to the EU.

ANIMAL HUSBANDRY

Meadows and pastures make up about 18% of the total land area. Bulgaria had 2.8 million sheep, 14 million chickens, 1.7 million hogs, one million goats, 671,000 cattle, 225,000 donkeys, and 126,000 horses in 1999. Meat production (in carcass weight) in 1999 amounted to 488,000 tons. In the same year, the country produced 1.38 million tons of milk and 93,000 tons of eggs.

FISHING

Fishing resources in the Black Sea are less than abundant. Before 1960, the annual catch was slightly above 5,000 tons. Fishing output reached a high of 167,100 tons in 1976, then fell to 115,607 tons in 1982. In 2000, the total catch was 6,998 tons. Sea snails accounted for about 54% of the catch. Fishing vessels are based at the ports of Varna and Burgas, where the government built canning and processing plants.

DEPENDENCIES

Bulgaria has no territories or colonies.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anguelov, Zlatko. Communism and the Remorse of an Innocent Victimizer. College Station, Tex.: Texas AandM University Press, 2002.

Bristow, J. A. The Bulgarian Economy in Transition. Brookfield, Vt.: Edward Elgar, 1996.

Bulgaria: A Country Study, 2nd ed. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1993.

Dimitrov, Georgi. The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 1933–1949. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

The Fragility of Goodness: Why Bulgaria's Jews Survived the Holocaust: A Collection of Texts. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001.

International Smoking Statistics: A Collection of Historical Data from 30 Economically Developed Countries. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

McElrath, Karen (ed.). HIV and AIDS: A Global View. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002.

Perry, Duncan M. The Politics of Terror: The Macedonian Liberation Movements, 1893–1903. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1988.

Petkov, Petko. The United States and Bulgaria in World War I. Boulder, Colo.: East European Monographs, 1991.

User Contributions:

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