A Guide to Bulgarian Money
If You’re travelling to Bulgaria for the first time, you’ll want to know a little bit about the currency,
The currency in Bulgaria is the lev and the plural is leva. You may well see the acronym BGN used in currency conversion as this is the equivalent to GBP, EUR or USD.
There are 100 stotinki (equivalent to pence or cents) to 1 lev.
The coins used are 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50 stotinki and a 1 lev. The banknotes available are 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 leva.
The lev exchange rates are fairly stable.
At the moment 1 Lev = £0.40 GBP / €0.51 EUR / $0.80 USD
This makes it very easy to calculate if you’re used to Euros, just half everything. It’s a bit harder to convert to pounds in your head but you quickly get used to it.
Bulgaria is planning to join the Euro in 2012 which will simplify things further for residents of other Eurozone countries. British visitors to Bulgaria are also likely to benefit as it’s more likely they will be familiar with the value of their holiday money.
It’s not all good news though. Our Bulgarian friends are predicting the prices of everything will rise as retailers take advantage of the initial confusion of the value of the new currency. Prices are typically rounded up the nearest unit.
