Bulgaria is resoulte in the decision to keep the currency board in order to save the Bulgarian currency – the lev, which is tied to the euro now – from devaluation in the conditions of a worsening international chaos.

The currency board is deemed the tool which helped the country to get through the severe bank crisis in the middle of the 90’s.

The manager of the Bulgarian central bank Ivan Iskrov and the prime minister Sergey Stanishev recently confirmed the engagements of Bulgaria to a fixed rat of the lev until the moment that the country joins the eurozone.

“The currency board is here to stay”, said the prime minister Stanishev at a recent economics forum in Sofia. The board was introduced in the period 1996-1997, with a fixed rate of 1.95583 leva for 1 euro, when 14 Bulgarian banks bankrupted. The board and the government politics at the time allowed Bulgaria to accumulate a solid currency reserve by keeping a strict fisk and the accumulation of an annual budget surplus.