Стокова Структура На Външната Търговия На България С Държавите От Субсахарска Африка[Commodity structure of Bulgarian international trade with Sub-Saharan Africa]

The importance of African countries, especially of sub-Saharan ones, to Bulgaria is determined by the increasing role of the region in both global economy and policy, as well as its immense economic potential and natural resources. The introduction of the paper presents the dynamics of Bulgarian trade with the countries in Africa and specifically sub-Saharan Africa. The first section discusses the commodity structure of trade relations of Bulgaria with Africa, focusing again on sub-Saharan Africa for the period 2003-2013. Bulgaria’s international trade is concentrated in a small number of countries, thus the third section analyses the commodity structure of both imports and export to these main trade partners. The last section of the paper analyses thoroughly the identified in the former sections most traded commodities – copper ores and refined copper, presenting the dynamics of import and export for the period 2006-2013, as well as the share and importance of those products for Bulgaria’s international trade in general. Finally, the conclusion summarizes the main insights provoked by the analysis, namely that first, sub-Saharan countries become more and more significant for Bulgaria as trading partners, as the volume of trade with them grew 3 times faster than that of the overall trade flows for the period 2003-2013; second, Bulgaria’s trade with those countries is regretfully still weakly diversified with imports and exports being concentrated mainly in primary goods; third, that copper and copper ores are niche products in Bulgaria’s trade not only with African countries, but are competitive export products in a global perspective; and finally, the main conclusion of the paper – that both Bulgarian institutions and enterprises are underestimating and underutilizing sub-Saharan African countries as trading partners.