You heard that phrase if you live in Bulgaria, didn't you? It is usually accompanied by a complaint about the bright socialist past when the country had factories and exported electrоcars, computers and other internationally-renowned products from the local industry. Or, there is a comparison with the developed countries to the west of us who produce and export "high value added goods", unlike Bulgaria, which could boast only its raw materials. One would say that the country is a classical raw material economy similar to Latin American countries.

In fact, economic statistics are quite prosaic. BNB data show that the share of raw materials and materials in the country's exports has fallen steadily - from 53.1% in 1995 (the earliest year for which the BNB has published foreign trade data) to 39.0% in 2017 This shows that 22 years ago, more than half of Bulgaria's exports of goods were raw materials (in value terms), and now it is less than 40%. Ie. obviously most of the country's exports are no longer raw materials.

This restructuring in commodity exports goes hand in hand with yet another extremely positive process, namely increasing the share of investment goods. This share is growing steadily, from 13.9% in 1995 to 25.2% in 2017. It is the investment goods traditionally behind the "high added value" cluster - here are the machines, the appliances and the apparatus; electric machines; means of transport; spare parts and equipment, and more.

All sub-groups of investment goods show a growth in their share of total exports, with some - spare parts and equipment and other investment goods - even more than double. Outside the raw materials and investment goods, the other two large export groups - consumer goods and energy resources show a more volatile dynamics. Energy shares also show an increase in share compared to 1995, while in consumer goods, despite some increase in the early millennium, the share remained almost unchanged from the base year 1995. Overall, changes in the structure of Bulgarian exports of goods are extremely positive over the last 2-3 decades. They show a clear trend of restructuring towards an increasing share of investment goods that are highly processed at the expense of a smaller share of raw materials and materials (ie low-processing goods).

This process mirrors the serious investments in the Bulgarian industry but also reflects its good export competitiveness - if the industry producing the investment goods was not competitive, it would be hard to increase its export value by 1212% (ie more than 13 times ) since 1995. By comparison, total exports of goods have grown in value terms about two times more slowly - by 628% or by more than 7 times. Indeed, investment goods are the group of exports of goods with the strongest growth since 1995 compared to all other groups, which is also indicative of the good performance of local industry in foreign markets. Nevertheless, the mantra that the country is mostly exporting raw materials continues to thrive, including economics teachers and other so- experts.

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