Bulgaria's services, value added (annual % growth) was 3.93% in 2025, the latest year in the World Bank's World Development Indicators. That is up 0.73 percentage points from 3.2% in 2015.
Key figures
| Value | Year | |
|---|---|---|
| Latest | 3.93% | 2025 |
| Five years earlier | -1.73% | 2020 |
| Ten years earlier | 3.2% | 2015 |
| Highest | 24.55% | 1987 |
| Lowest | -30.05% | 1997 |
| Average since 2016 | 4.06% | 2016–2025 |
| First recorded | 9.33% | 1981 |
What the numbers say
In 2025, Bulgaria's services, value added (annual % growth) fell 1.19 percentage points on 2024 (from 5.12% to 3.93%).
Across the 30 yearly changes before that (1995 to 2024), the average change was +0.27 percentage points and a typical year strayed about 12.43 percentage points from that (the standard deviation). This year's change was 0.1 standard deviations below that average, so it was an ordinary year: it sits within the range of normal year-to-year movement.
On record, the biggest yearly rise was 40.34 percentage points in 1998 and the biggest yearly fall was 38.84 percentage points in 1997. The numbers show how large and when, not why; for the cause, look at what happened in that country in those years.
From 2016 to 2025 there is no clear straight-line trend: a straight line explains 5% of the movement over 10 observed years, so the value is moving around more than it is heading anywhere.
Worked out from the yearly values above. How the checks work: standard deviation, z-scores and straight-line trends.
How it compares
In 2025, Bulgaria had the 70th highest value of the 161 economies reporting that year. Higher is not always better: for some indicators the lowest value is the one to aim for. See the full ranking.
| Value | Year | |
|---|---|---|
| Bulgaria | 3.93% | 2025 |
| World | 3.24% | 2024 |
| Europe & Central Asia | 1.47% | 2025 |
Closest to Bulgaria in the 2025 ranking
What this measures
Services industries correspond to ISIC (Rev. 4) divisions 45-99 and includes wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles, hotels and restaurants, transport, storage and communication, financial intermediation, real estate, renting and business activities, public administration and defence, compulsory social security, education, health and social work, other community, social and personal service activities, private households with employed persons, and extra-territorial organizations and bodies. Value added is the contribution to the economy by a producer or an industry or an institutional sector, which is estimated by the total value of output produced and deducting the total value of intermediate consumption of goods and services used to produce that output. This indicator denotes the percentage change over each previous year of the constant price (base year 2015) series in United States dollars.
Limitations: In the services industries, including most of government, value added in constant prices is often imputed from labor inputs, such as real wages or number of employees. In the absence of well defined measures of output, measuring the growth of services remains difficult.
Regional and income-group figures are computed by the World Bank as a weighted average.
All 45 values
| Year | Services, value added (annual % growth) |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 3.93 |
| 2024 | 5.12 |
| 2023 | 4.22 |
| 2022 | 3.99 |
| 2021 | 9.53 |
| 2020 | -1.73 |
| 2019 | 4.77 |
| 2018 | 5.15 |
| 2017 | 3.89 |
| 2016 | 1.68 |
| 2015 |
Services, value added (annual % growth) in nearby economies
More economic policy & debt data for Bulgaria
- Adjusted savings, education expenditure (% of GNI) — 4.06% (2021)
- Adjusted savings, net forest depletion (current US$) — US$0 (2021)
- Adjusted savings, mineral depletion (current US$) — US$387.76 million (2021)
- Adjusted savings, energy depletion (current US$) — US$46.2 million (2021)
- Trade in services (% of GDP) — 21.44% (2025)
- Communications, computer, etc. (% of service imports, BoP) — 37.95% (2025)
- Primary income payments (BoP, current US$) — US$11.11 billion (2025)
- Imports of goods and services (current US$, BoP) — US$67.93 billion (2025)
- Goods imports (current US$, BoP) — US$58.51 billion (2025)
Reading data like this
Questions people ask
- What is Bulgaria's services, value added (annual % growth)?
- 3.93% in 2025, according to the World Bank (World Development Indicators).
- How has it changed since 1981?
- It is down 5.4 percentage points from 9.33% in 1981. The highest value was 24.55% in 1987 and the lowest -30.05% in 1997.
- How does Bulgaria rank?
- 70th highest of 161 economies with data for 2025.
- Is the latest change in services, value added (annual % growth) unusual for Bulgaria?
- In 2025, Bulgaria's services, value added (annual % growth) fell 1.19 percentage points on 2024 (from 5.12% to 3.93%). Across the 30 yearly changes before that (1995 to 2024), the average change was +0.27 percentage points and a typical year strayed about 12.43 percentage points from that (the standard deviation). This year's change was 0.1 standard deviations below that average, so it was an ordinary year: it sits within the range of normal year-to-year movement.
Source
World Bank, World Development Indicators, indicator NV.SRV.TOTL.KD.ZG, licensed CC BY 4.0. Original source: Country official statistics, National Statistical Offices (NSOs); National Accounts data files, Central Banks; Staff estimates, World Bank (WB) Figures are fetched from the World Bank API and refreshed monthly; see the series on data.worldbank.org. The full definition and method are in the World Bank's metadata glossary. Comparisons use the same World Bank release.
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