Petrol is readily available on the black market - at 1 Deutsche mark the litter. The lev has dived to unprecedented lows by Bulgarian standards, beating all expectations. The national currency has depreciated by a factor of 40 within a year. Foreign-exchange reserves now stand at some 415 million US dollars, which is only half of the 992.2 million dollars falling due this year in payments on Bulgaria's foreign debt. 135.1 million dollars were paid in January, but debt payments at the end of the year will be most difficult to meet.
Many economists see the rampant dollar as the main inflationary factor.
For some time now, there has been an idea to fix the exchange rate. This is impossible for the time being, argues central bank Governor Lyubomir Filipov. To fix the rate, this country should receive substantial funding from sources abroad, or else internal resources should be severely restricted and production stabilized. Bulgaria cannot count on large lump-sum external financing. The Socialist Government, which resigned at the end of December, failed to meet its commitments under the fourth stand-by arrangement with the International Monetary Fund which was thus terminated.