I do not expect there to be a shock in prices. It happened before that. We announced the dual designation of prices much earlier. This was said by economist Prof. Daniela Bobeva in the show "Face to Face" on bTV.
According to her, 2025 was the year of big shopping, because people massively used their savings, accumulated over years.
"If we divide the money spent last year, we should do it in three. First, what do we do as investments - gold, but why gold. It rose a lot and we thought that it would constantly rise and instead of us working for money, money would work for us. We have spent a billion and a hundred thousand on gold", Bobeva pointed out.
In second place is real estate. We have over 24,000 new homes, which are over 2.5 billion square meters of living space. Calculate how much 2,000 euros per square meter are, and in many areas the prices are higher. 30% of this multi-million housing area was paid for without loans. You tell me if this is poverty. Last year, 20,000 more cars were bought. On the one hand, we have investments in gold and real estate, I don't even count cryptocurrencies. A large percentage of savings went into cryptocurrencies", she added.
If we monitor savings in banks, because we don't have statistics for the other part, then the big question is which people buy. The stigma is that only the rich buy, and the poor become poorer. But we see more dynamics in smaller savings and deposits are increasing among smaller consumers. People who are not rich can also afford to buy apartments. Despite the differences between individual groups of people, there was a lot of money for investments, but also for consumption, the economist explained.
According to Bobeva, there were 1,200,000 more trips last year. "The destination is not only Turkey and Greece, we also have longer trips. We are in the top 3 in Europe in terms of consumption of goods. So it was a good year in terms of spending and investments, but the price for this is very high," she added.
You spend either money saved for years, or loans - we are robbing our past and robbing the future. Our economy cannot afford such high incomes as the official ones. Compared to productivity, they are much higher, so in 2026 we will have much worse economic indicators, added Daniela Bobeva.
According to her, it would be a mistake to extend the period of dual price indication. "Bevs will be preserved and those who hold them will try to pay with them, and merchants will accept them at the risk of violating the legislation. A reasonable approach is to remove the levs and not try to shop with them after February 1, because it will be much more expensive", she believes. And she added that the exchange rate for levs will be at a much higher rate than the fixed one.
She also commented on the 2026 budget submitted by the "Zhelyazkov" cabinet, which was then withdrawn. "I didn't like the Budget. It wasn't reasonable. "It was unrealistic on the revenue side and even more ineffective on the expenditure side. Even those who introduced it didn't like it," she said.