Pleven General Information
Pleven is located in the very heart of Miziya, in the agricultural region, surrounded by low limestone hills. It is bordered by Vratza, Lovech and Veliko Tarnovo. To the north Pleven district borders Danube River, which is also European transport corridor number 4. This central location in Northern Bulgaria defines Pleven’s importance as a big administrative, economic, political, cultural and transport centre. The town is located 170 km from the capital town of Sofia, at 320 km from the Black sea coast, at 50 km from the Danube River, at 130 km from the Danube Bridge and at about 70 km from the Balkan.

The relief is monotonous – the Danube plain, mixed with hills. This type of relief is favorable for developing the infrastructure and the populated places. The climate is temperate-continental with temperatures averaging in -2 C for January, and 23 C for July. The region is very well water supplied: there are 3 more relatively big rivers except for Danube River – Iskur, Vit and Osum. There are 83 dams built in the district as well; Dolni Dabnik and Enitsa are more significant.

63.5% of the population is urban, while 36.5% is rural. The density of the population is 67 people per square km, a little less than the country’s density of 70 people per square km. In terms of the age of the population, the common tendency for the country is that the portion of people 65 years old or more is growing up, while the portion of children 15 years old or less is going down – a proof of the fact that the nation is getting old. The population between 15 and 65 years is 57% of the people in the district. 90.1% of the people in Pleven are Bulgarians, 5.1% Turks, and 4% Roma population.

The name of the town reaches world fame at the time of Russian-Turkish War. On 10th of December 1877 with the liberation of Pleven the victorious result of the war is defined. The press all over Europe denotes the event and the grateful Bulgarian population builds many monuments for the heroes of Pleven epos.

Today Pleven is an important administrative, industrial, agricultural, cultural, tourist center, a large military garrison, telecommunication and transport and commercial center.
It has preserved its cultural and historical heritage in many museums, monuments, ossuaries and the unique for Bulgaria panorama "Pleven epos 1877". It is famous as the town of the museums.

Pleven Economy
The GDP of the region is 2.98% of the national GDP. The portion of the light industry (food, beverages, tobacco and textile) is more than 90%. The registered unemployment was a liitle over 17% in 2003. It is different throughout the region – 9% in the city of Pleven and more than 30% in the small towns.

Agriculture: The region has intensely developing agriculture, mainly grains and oleaginous plants: wheat, maize, barley, sunflower. Stock - breeding is totally privatized.
Food processing industry is traditional as well and is represented by a cannery, brewery, tobacco processing factory, enterprises for the production of chicken meat, refined vegetable oil, sugar, etc. The agricultural area of the district is 5.5%, which puts Pleven in forth place after Dobrich, Bourgas and Plovdiv. Unfortunately, agriculture is not technically developed, which makes it ineffective – there are more people employed but the overall production is less compared to other districts. Agriculture contributes with 30.67% to the GVA of the region. There are 3,253,320 decares of arable land, which is 86% of the total land in Pleven.

There are machine building plants, a cement plant, and foundries. The extracting industry is well developed due to the natural resources of oil and gas.

The Institute of Viticulture and Enology in Pleven is a scientific-research institution for genetics, breeding, vine propagating material technologies, environmental and resource-economical technologies for grapes, wine and alcoholic drinks production.

Bulgaria’s second Nuclear Power Plant is being built now in Belene. It will be of great importance to the district and to the nation.