Bulgarian Lev - BGN

The Bulgarian Lev has been the national currency of Bulgaria since 1881 (then established at the same parity as the French Franc of that time), when the country became an independent Republic of the Ottoman Empire.

Renamed several times “new lev” in an inflation context after WWII ((1 « new lev » = 100 « old levs » in 1952, then 1 new « new lev » = 10 « old levs » in 1962), the Bulgarian lev officially remained stable, as it can’t be convert, until the collapse of the “Eastern bloc” at the end of the 90s; but it was negotiated in the black market really under its official value.

A true new Lev (BGN) was adopted by Bulgaria in 1999 with the basis of 1000 times the value of the old lev, and a parity defined with the Deutsche Mark (the German currency) since 1997 was maintained at 1 BGN = 1 DEM.

At that time, in Bulgaria, a « Currency Board » had been founded to ensure the stability of the national currency on the basis of currency reserves held by the central Bank of Bulgaria that always must be equivalent to the whole Bulgarian currency in circulation.

This system enabled a pegging of the lev on the Euro equivalent to the pegging on the Deutsche Mark since 1999 at 1 EUR = 1,95583 BGN.

A member of the European Union since 2007, Bulgaria hasn’t been able to join the Euro area yet because of an inflation superior to the ERM II (Exchange Rate Mechanism II) criterion and a worsening of the public debts after the financial crisis of the Fall of 2008.

Lean against the Euro, the Bulgarian Lev kept appreciating against the US dollar from January 2005 (USD/BGN = 1,65) to July 2008 (USD/BGN = 1,23), before clearly falling (USD/BGN= 1.3135 in November 2009).

Most of the analysts think that Bulgaria could join the Euro area in 2012.