Italy and Romania are Bulgaria's top preferred destination for transborder investment, estimates of the business news website Investor.bg show.

The data is based on the yearly statistics produced by the central bank BNB.

Bulgaria invested EUR 162 M abroad in 2014, and EUR 1.8 B over the past ten years (2004-2014). Last year's investment was 10.4% down from 2013 and just a third compared to 2008, when the historic high of EUR 522 M was registered.

The amount of money spent by Bulgaria abroad in a decade is dwarfed by foreign direct investment (FDI) here, which was equal to EUR 1.289 B in 2014 alone (the figure was lower in the BNB's preliminary estimates) and to EUR 36.514 B over the abovementioned ten-year period.  

Between 2004 and 2014, 51 percent of Bulgaria's foreign investment went to EU member states, with Italy (EUR 185 M) and Romania (EUR 177 M) topping the list within the 28-nation bloc followed by Luxembourg (EUR 95 M), Germany (EUR 86 M) and the UK (77.6 M).

Outside the EU, Serbia (EUR 138 M) and the US (EUR 118 M) come first, alongside neighboring Turkey (EUR 72 M) and Macedonia (EUR 71 M), while Russia is next with EUR 65 M.

Last year, top investment destinations were the US, Serbia, Romania, Russia and Macedonia.

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