The first year of post-Zhivkov governance brought substantial political confusion and paralysis, despite the country's desperate need to concentrate on economic reform. The interim cabinet and parliament of 1990 provided only stopgap measures, not the longterm planning that all factions believed necessary. The coalition government of Dimitur Popov came to power at the beginning of 1991 with broad support but under the worst economic conditions since World War II (see Governance after Zhivkov , ch. 4). The Popov program planned first to use support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF--see Glossary), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD--see Glossary), and the EEC to achieve financial stability. The second phase of the plan was privatization of the Bulgarian enterprise system. The hard winter of 1990-91 began to break the policy stalemate between the ruling BSP and its increasingly powerful opposition, the UDF (see Nongovernmental Political Institutions , ch. 4).

Data as of June 1992