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
Armenians in Bulgaria First Bulgarian Empire in the 9th century. After both Bulgaria and Armenia were conquered by the Ottoman Empire, many Armenian settlers from Armenia, Crimea, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Asia Minor arrived in what is now Bulgaria due to internal migration. Those coming from Armenia were forced to seek a new homeland because of their country's devastation by Arabs, Persians, and Turks. With Bulgaria gaining autonomy in the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, many Armenians fled the Ottoman Empire because of the Hamidian massacres in the 1890s and settled in the country, particularly in the major cities of Plovdiv