Byala Municipality, Ruse Province
# Byala Municipality, Ruse Province

Byala Municipality (Bulgarian: Община Бяла) is a municipality (obshtina) in Ruse Province, Central-North Bulgaria, located in the Danubian Plain about 20 km southeast of Danube river. It is named after its administrative centre - the town of Byala.

The municipality embraces a territory of 341 $km^2$ (132 sq mi) with a population of 14,962 inhabitants, as of December 2009.

The area is crossroads of some of the main directions in the country - road E85, road E83, I-51 and I-52, which connect the province centre of Ruse with the cities of Veliko Tarnovo, Pleven, Svishtov and respectively the country capital of Sofia and Shipka pass. Yantra river flows through the area from south to north.

## Settlements

Byala Municipality includes the following 11 places (towns are shown in bold):

| Town/Village | Cyrillic | Population (December 2009) |
| - | - | - |
| Byala | Бяла | 9,015 |
| Bistrentsi | Бистренци | 395 |
| Bosilkovtsi | Босилковци | 669 |
| Botrov | Ботров | 319 |
| Dryanovets | Дряновец | 748 |
| Koprivets | Копривец | 884 |
| Lom Cherkovna | Лом Черковна | 462 |
| Pet Kladentsi | Пет кладенци | 64 |
| Peychinovo | Пейчиново | 343 |
| Polsko Kosovo | Полско Косово | 1,686 |
| Starmen | Стърмен | 377 |
| Total | | 14,962 |

## Demography

The following table shows the change of the population during the last four decades.

Byala Municipality :

| Year | 1975 | 1985 | 1992 | 2001 | 2005 | 2007 | 2009 | 2011 |
| - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| Population | 21,655 | 20,261 | 19,348 | 17,004 | 16,040 | 15,533 | 14,962 | ... |
| Sources: Census 2001, Census 2011, „pop-stat.mashke.org“, |||||||||

### Religion

According to the latest Bulgarian census of 2011, the religious composition, among those who answered the optional question on religious identification, was the following:

Religious composition of Byala Municipality

Orthodox Christianity

68.1%

Catholicism

0.4%

Protestantism

0.4%

Islam

5.7%

No religion

8.5%

Prefer not to answer, others and indefinable

16.9% :

