Bulgaria

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Basic Country Information

  • Region: Europe & North America
  • Income Group: Upper Middle
  • Population: 6.88 million
  • GNI per Capita: 27380 USD
  • Urban population : 75.7 % of total
  • Life expectancy at birth: 72 years
  • Human Development Index (HDI): 0.816

How does Bulgaria control corruption?

Forecasted trend:
Improving
Integrity Transparency
Country’s Score 7.06/10 17/20
World Rank 43/114 17/143
Regional Rank 29/31 12/33
Income group Rank 9/29 5/40

Index of Public Integrity

IPI Score: 7.06 / 10
The IPI score is the mean of the six components scores, which result from the standardization and normalization of original source data to range between 1 and 10 using a min-max-transformation, with higher values representing better performance.
2015 2017 2019 2021 2023
Components Component Score
(max=10)		 World
Rank		 Income Group
Rank		 Regional
Rank
Opportunities for Corruption
Administrative Burden 8.08 78/0 20/0 31/31
Trade Openness 9.92 19/0 1/0 19/31
Administrative Transparency 8.88 9/114 2/29 7/31
Online Services 7.63 38/114 12/29 20/31
Budget Transparency 8.08 37/114 14/29 16/31
Constraints on Corruption
Judicial Independence 4.53 67/114 11/29 27/31
Freedom of the Press 6.16 76/114 19/29 31/31
E-Citizenship 7.1 46/114 9/29 29/31

Opportunities are permanent enabling circumstances for corruption. Empirical evidence exists that administrative discretion (lack of administrative transparency and poor regulation) combined with unaccountable resources (non-transparent public finance, both from domestic sources and international aid) create opportunities for corruption.

Constraints are permanent disabling circumstances of corruption. They encompass the legal response of authorities as well as the response by society (a free press and digitally enabled citizens organized as civil society or as individual voters).

Societies manage to control corruption if they find the right balance between opportunities and constraints.

Read more in the methodology.

 

For Budget Transparency, last value available is for 2019. For Online Services, last value available is for 2020. For Judicial Independence, last value available is for 2019. For the E-citizenship sub-components, last values available are also for 2020, and missing values in any of the sub-indicators were replaced with the latest available data point.

No IPI data for Bulgaria

Transparency in Bulgaria

T-Index Score: 17 / 20
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on our sources
 
T-index
 
 
World
Average
Income Group
Average
Regional
Average

De Facto Transparency: 11 / 14

De Facto Components

De facto components refer to the online availability, accessibility, and coverage of public data in selected relevant domains. These were assessed as completely existing (1 point), existing with partial information or paid access (0.5 point), or not existing (0 points).
Past expenditures (last fiscal year) Yes
Current expenditures (budget tracker) No
Public Procurement Portal Yes
Land cadaster Partial
Register of commerce Yes
Auditor General's report Yes
Supreme Court's hearings schedule No
Supreme Court's rulings Yes
Financial disclosures for public officials Yes
Conflict of interest disclosures Yes
Official Development Assistance (ODA) Partial
Mining concessions Yes
Building permits in the capital city Yes
Official gazette Yes

De Jure Transparency: 6 / 6

De Jure Components

De jure components refer to the existence of formal transparency commitments in relevant selected domains. These were assessed as existing (1 point) or not (0 points).
Freedom of Information Acts (FOIA) Yes
Open Government Partnership (OGP) Yes
United Nations Conventions Against Corruption (UNCAC) Yes
Financial Action Task Force Against Money Laundering (or equivalent) Yes
Plurinational transparency agreement (EITI, OECD, WTO GPA, or CPTPP) Yes
Beneficial Ownership Yes

Give us feedback on our sources
Please download our full dataset here
Note: Links last accessed in June 2023.

No TI data for Bulgaria

Bulgaria's Corruption Forecast

Forecasted trend:
Improving
Bulgaria has for many years been adopting public accountability tools and is a global leader of anti-corruption legislation, but those accomplishments have had little influence on the real rules of the game so far. The country underperforms on judicial autonomy from private influence, while an impunity culture for the ruling class still reigns and too few officials are administratively sanctioned on grounds of corruption. However, significant progress has been achieved in the past 12 years on reducing administrative burden and increasing transparency, and a highly active civil society and media constantly demand better quality of governance. As the country had managed to elect a pro-business government with an anti-corruption mandate in 2021 it is likely that progress will continue.
Components 2007/8 2020 Trendline
Budget Transparency 5.15 8.84 1
Administrative Burden 7.05 8.19 1
Judicial Independence 3.61 4.46 0
Press Freedom 8.63 6.73 0
E-Citizenship 3.29 7.51 0
Online Services 5.36 7.38 0
  positive change;   negative change;   change not statically significant.

For Budget Transparency, period considered is 2008-2019. For Judicial Independence, last value available is for 2019. For Press Freedom, period considered is 2007-2017. Due to insufficient data on Facebook users, E-citizenship was computed as the mean of the remaining two sub-indicators (fixed broadband subscriptions and Internet users).

No Forecast data for Bulgaria