Published in Scientific Papers. Series "Management, Economic Engineering in Agriculture and rural development", Vol. 24 ISSUE 2
Written by Krasimira SLAVEVA, Sergey NAYDENOV, Marina NIKOLOVA, Pavlin PAVLOV

In Bulgaria, according to the Institute for Market Economics, 6 economic centers have been defined, which form a large part of the national economy. The paper focuses on the economic centers located in the territory of the North Central Planning Region and the North Western Planning Region, emphasizing their role in revealing the potential for development of the rural areas within their scope.In this context, the specific features of their development have been analyzed and the possibilities for future development have been assessed in order to achieve the goals of sustainable development of the territory, to increase the living standards of the population, and to reduce the risk of poverty in rural areas. The study utilized statistical methods for analyzing dynamic trends, hypothesis testing, regression, and correlation analysis. It was found that the indicators for the municipalities within the economic centers are more favorable compared to those outside of them.The results of the analysis demonstrate that the presence of economic centers in the region has a statistically significant impact on indicators such as population, age dependency ratio, population density, average annual salary of employees under labor and service contracts, and unemployment rate.

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