The average level of gray economy in Bulgaria for the period 1991-2015 is 29.17%. This is the data of the International Monetary Fund, which has estimated the size of the gray economy in 158 countries around the world.

Over the years, the share of the gray economy in Bulgaria ranged between 20.83% and 35.3%. On the background of Europe, the indicators for Bulgaria are extremely high. They approach us to Romania, where the average indicators for the period are 30.14%. Among European non-EU countries with such a gray economy, Russia has - 38.42%. If we compare Bulgaria with the rest of the world, the data should not be comforting either because we are approaching the African countries and Pakistan.

Data for 2017 puts Bulgaria at the top of the 31 European economies in the gray sector. It occupies 29.6% and here we lead to our other Balkan neighbors: Turkey / 27.2% /, Croatia / 26.5% / and Romania / 26.3% /. Greece, whose economy and finances have collapsed over the last decade, has shown far better results than we did last year. There the gray sector is 21.5%. Europe's best countries are Switzerland / 6% /, Austria / 7.1% / and Luxembourg / 8.2% /. Among them is the Netherlands, which is the largest foreign investor in Bulgaria, with 8.4%.

This is one of the first surveys in which new statistical methods are used to assess the gray economy. Until the 1990s, economists typically valued the gray sector on the basis of differences in the national accounting system, in a number of cases using less precise methods related to labor market analysis, energy consumption, money turnover rates.