Mediterranean Hegemony Road

When Ferdinand and his party returned to Sofia from London, it was early 1904.

To Ferdinand's gratification, the Bulgarian government was still operating in an orderly manner during the six months since he left this time, and there was no trouble.

Prime Minister Konstantin sent a summary sheet and said: Your Majesty, this is what Bulgaria has achieved in the past year!

Ferdinand naturally took the report, flipped through it, and soon showed a satisfied smile.

In 1903, it was definitely a leap forward for Bulgaria. The equipment imported from abroad had been installed and put into use.

In terms of the total industrial volume, compared with 1899, it has increased by 87% in four years!

In addition to the restoration of some factories left by the Ottomans, many industries in the country have developed by leaps and bounds.

Now many workers who went to the construction site due to the economic crisis have also begun to return to the factory one after another.

Bulgaria once again embarked on the highway of economic development and began to rush forward.

Of course, these industrial equipments have only exploded in part of their production capacity. If they want to fully develop their production potential, they will have to wait at least until the end of 1905. By then, the industrial capacity of Bulgaria will reach a new height!

For example, the steel industry: in 1903, Bulgaria's total steel output reached 546,000 tons, of which steel output: 234,000 tons; iron output: 303,000 tons; and 9,000 tons of special steel!

The most important thing is that the Bulgarian steel plant has finally started to make a profit, although it is only a paltry few hundred thousand lev, and the amortization of the depreciation of the equipment has not been calculated, but it is also a huge improvement!

This shows that the steel plant has begun to enter a virtuous cycle, which means that the government finances no longer need to continue to pour money into the mouth of this gold swallowing beast indefinitely!

Coal: The total coal production in Bulgaria is 1.266 million tons, including 151,000 tons of coking coal, 569,000 tons of wood coal and 546,000 tons of lignite.

Shipbuilding: The two 20,000-ton docks and three 10,000-ton docks previously planned by Ferdinand have all been completed and put into operation.

...

Education: Literacy education is still a long way to go. According to the estimates of the Ministry of Education, it is a great victory to reduce the illiteracy rate by half within the next five years; if we want to completely eliminate illiteracy, twenty years is a relatively reasonable number!

Oh, it's like waiting for the next generation to grow up, but there's nothing Ferdinand can do about it.

After all, the current Bulgarian foundation is different from the previous one. In the previous Bulgarian, there were basically a few readers in every village, and it was not too difficult to carry out literacy education!

Now, many immigrant villages are all illiterate, and literacy education can only be taught by people sent by the Ministry of Education. Of course, the speed cannot be accelerated.

And many villagers have little interest in reading and literacy, and the learning speed can only be described by turtle speed! Ferdinand can't do anything about these people, he can only choose to give up. Fortunately, illiteracy does not affect farming!

Not only that, the Ministry of Education also found that the mathematics level of Bulgarians has dropped significantly.

All the new population was pulled down!

In addition to literacy education, teachers also have to teach them simple digital knowledge!

In contrast, basic education has progressed very smoothly. Many people have low requirements for learning cultural knowledge by themselves, but the requirements for the next generation are different!

Even the primary schools in many parts of Bulgaria are only spread to the towns. Everyone is very willing to walk dozens of miles and send their children over to study!

Of course, this also has something to do with the low tuition fees. Today's basic education mainly relies on financial allocations, and tuition fees are all symbolic collection points.

Students' living expenses, whether it is food or money, can be paid. Anyway, the school is not for profit, and the expenses are completely within the range of ordinary families!

As for higher-level education, if you can afford it, you can apply for free education.

In this way, you don't have to pay a penny, as long as you obey the state-assigned major and then deduct this part of the expenses from the salary in batches after graduation.

Don't be surprised why Ferdinand assigns majors in secondary schools. Now, the two universities in Bulgaria have less than 3,000 students each year combined!

Most people are not qualified to be admitted to universities, and the development direction is of course specialized technical colleges. So now middle school requires everyone to choose a subject to specialize in, and other subjects are minors!

Cultivating all-rounders has never been Ferdinand's goal! Training professional engineers and scientific researchers is the purpose of Bulgarian education!

If it is self-funded, the cost is much higher. The annual cost of a middle school student starts at 3,000 levs; if the tuition fee for a university education student is less than 50,000 levs, don’t even think about it!

Don't think it is too expensive. Bulgaria is now adopting elite education. High-quality educational resources are used in a centralized manner, and the cost is of course high.

Since it is self-funded, of course, this fee is paid in full by yourself, or it is a major supported by the government!

If there are liberal arts majors other than administrative funding, the number is even larger, ranging from 200,000 levs to 500,000 levs, which is more expensive than many colleges and universities for studying abroad!

The sequelae is that so far, Bulgarian college students have exceeded five digits, but liberal arts college students outside the financial allocation have never exceeded three digits!

Financially: The total revenue of the Bulgarian government reached 1.38 billion levs (about 55.2 million pounds).

The main reason is that the newly added territories have gradually recovered their vitality and can provide tax revenue to the government. Especially the Istanbul area, which alone contributed 180 million levs of financial revenue!

There is also the result of the Second Five-Year Plan, and now it has begun to deny finances!

Compared with 1898, this figure has increased by nearly 1.4 times, and it has also increased by 15.5% compared with the previous year.

According to Ferdinand's plan, starting from 1904, the navy will also be included in one of the priorities of the government's financial allocation, and it is estimated that the opponent is still the Ottoman Empire.

Oh, that's just a small expense. The key is that the bonds issued by the Bulgarian government and some of the loans have already expired one after another. The government must leave enough funds to pay for it. This is the main reason for the financial strain!

In fact, the Bulgarian government has repeatedly borrowed new debts to repay old debts. Now Ferdinand finally understands the difficulties of the Ministry of Finance and decides to reduce debts!

In 1900, the total debt of the Bulgarian government reached its peak, reaching as high as 2.6 billion leva. In the following years, the government took advantage of the economic crisis to recover several batches of bonds at low prices and repaid several loans that had expired.

Over the past three years, the Bulgarian government has successively repaid 183 million leva, and more than 87 million leva of loans will expire this year. After the repayment, the government's debt pressure will slightly decrease.

And in the days to come, if there is no accident, the Bulgarian government will reduce its holdings of debts every year, and increase the amount to achieve fiscal normalization as soon as possible!

Oh, in fact, it is impossible to repay it. If the debts in hand are not reduced, the Bulgarian government will be kidnapped by loans in future international affairs, and it will be difficult to extricate itself!

Who said that the current creditors are all foreign powers? Don't expect people to follow the rules so much. If you are in a hurry, they force you to repay the loan in advance. What can the Bulgarian government do?

Originally, the international loan of this era was the Overlord Loan. According to the background of this era, as long as people give up the interest income, they can ask for money in advance!

Of course, Ferdinand would have liked someone to call for the money in advance, so that he could save some interest.

The premise is that it is only for small creditors, such as big creditors like France, let's forget it, paying off at one time will make Bulgaria's finances bankrupt!

Compared with industry, the growth rate of agriculture is even more exaggerated. Compared with 1898, it has directly increased by 1.8 times.

Of course, Ferdinand didn't take this set of data into his heart. With the increase in land, the food naturally increased, and the government did not play a big role here!

Grain on the international market is now worthless. In order to stabilize the price of grain, the Bulgarian government has to spend a lot of money to purchase a batch of grain from the market as a reserve grain.

What satisfies Ferdinand the most is the population growth rate of Bulgaria. It really is the skyrocketing population of Guotai Min'an. In 1903, the birth rate reached an astonishing 5.01%, which was basically the same as the hairy bear!

Of course, the death rate also rose to 2.03%. After all, after the population growth, Bulgaria's medical conditions have not kept up, mainly because of the shortage of doctors!

Ferdinand could do nothing about this long training cycle that lasted for more than ten years. So far, except for the first batch of doctors who have been qualified to graduate, the doctors trained in Bulgarian specialization are still practicing!

Just these hundreds of people, after being scattered all over Bulgaria, did not even have a bubble come out!

According to the estimates of the Population Agency, the next three to five years will be a period of population explosion in Bulgaria. Especially the immigrants from the Ottoman Empire. In order to move in the past few years, they all voluntarily reduced their births. Now that their lives have stabilized, they must work hard to create villains!

According to the latest population statistics, the total population of Bulgaria has reached more than 14 million, and the population growth rate has reached 2.97%!

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