Economy of Bulgaria (574 euro) (December, 2017). The national currency is the lev (plural leva), pegged to the euro at a rate of 1.95583 leva for 1 euro. The lev is the strongest and most stable currency in Eastern Europe. The strongest sectors in the economy are energy, mining, metallurgy, machine building, agriculture and tourism. Primary industrial exports are clothing, iron and steel, machinery and refined fuels. The trading partners with largest contribution to the import/export are Germany, Italy, Romania, Turkey, Greece, Russia, France, Spain, Poland, Netherlands, China, Hungary and Belgium. Sofia is the capital and economic heart of Bulgaria and home to
Protestantism in Bulgaria church funding was cut off by a law curbing foreign currency transactions. Because many ministers had been educated in the West before World War II, they were suspected automatically of supporting the opposition parties. In 1949 thirty-one Protestant clergymen were charged with working for American intelligence and running a spy ring in Bulgaria. All church property was confiscated, and the churches' legal status was revoked. Most of the mainstream Protestant denominations maintained the right to worship nominally guaranteed by the constitution of 1947. Like the practitioners of the other faiths, Protestants in Bulgaria enjoyed greater religious freedom after the fall