FACTBOX – Key facts and figures about Bulgaria

SOFIA, June 23 (Reuters) – Bulgaria holds general elections on
Saturday. Following are some facts about Bulgaria:

POPULATION: 7.8 million – 83.9 percent ethnic Bulgarians, 9.4 percent
ethnic Turks, 4.7 Roma gypsies and 2.0 percent Russian, Armenian and
other, according to a 2001 census.

RELIGION: Eastern Orthodoxy is practised by 83 percent of Bulgarians,
while 12 percent are Muslims.

LANGUAGE: The official language is Bulgarian.

AREA: 110,994 sq km (42,855 sq miles).

Bulgaria is bordered to the north by Romania, to the east by the Black
Sea, to the south by Turkey and Greece, to the west by Serbia and
Montenegro and the Republic of Macedonia.

CAPITAL: Sofia. Population 1.19 million.

ARMED FORCES: Bulgaria became a NATO member in April 2004 after
carrying out defence reforms and cutting its 93,000-strong armed
forces to 45,000. It will be further reduced by 2015.

ECONOMY: The centrist government of former king Simeon Saxe-Coburg has
maintained macroeconomic stability, slashed the country’s public
foreign debt and earned it a series of credit rating upgrades since it
came into power in 2001.

Bulgaria enjoys relatively low inflation following an economic crisis
in 1996/97, when the country pegged its lev to the euro in a currency
board regime.

Despite a robust economic growth over 4.0 percent in the last four
years, monthly salaries average 150 euros ($185) and Bulgaria is the
poorest country of all EU candidates and member states except for
Turkey. GDP per capita was 2,498 euros in 2004, or 30 percent of the
EU average.

HISTORY: Established in 681, Bulgaria spent half of the last
millennium as part of the Ottoman Empire. Northern Bulgaria became a
constitutional monarchy after the 1878 Russian-Turkish war and was
united with the South in 1885.

By 1945 Bulgaria had taken part in three wars (the Balkan wars of
1912-13, World War One and World War Two, in which it sided with Nazi
Germany). In 1944, the Bulgarian Communist Party took power and ruled
as a single party until 1989.

On November 10, 1989 top communist party officials ousted
Soviet-backed dictator Todor Zhivkov. It renamed itself the Socialist
Party and won a sweeping victory in the first democratic parliamentary
election in June 1990.

But that government was ousted in a no-confidence vote after 11 months
in power to be replaced by a government of the right-of-centre Union
for Democratic Forces (UDF).

The UDF was followed by a non-party cabinet which resigned in
September 1994 amid accusations of slow reforms. Elections that
December again gave the Socialists, led by Zhan Videnov, a
parliamentary majority.

His government was no more successful at reforms and led Bulgaria into
an economic crisis marked by hyper-inflation and the collapse of a
third of the country’s banks in 1996-1997.

The Socialists were ousted in February 1997 as angry crowds stormed
parliament and was again replaced by the UDF, which achieved
macroeconomic stability and began talks to join NATO and the European
Union.

In 2001 ex-king Simeon Saxe-Coburg entered the election race three
months ahead of the vote. He stormed to power in a landslide election
victory with 120 of parliament’s 240 seats.

Europe’s first ex-monarch to be elected prime minister, Saxe-Coburg
formed a ruling coalition with the mostly ethnic-Turkish Movement for
Rights and Freedoms.

But despite securing NATO membership and signing Bulgaria’s EU entry
treaty, Saxe-Coburg’s Movement for Simeon II failed to stamp out
corruption and significantly raise living standards, and its
popularity has fallen to around 15 percent.

06/23/05 10:49 ET