Analysts don't see eye to eye on economy performance on 2011
Once everybody has agreed on the recession continuing in 2010,
the 'bets' are now moving to the prospects of the economy in 2011.
Whereas the IMF, the Government and some analysts see growth
returning, as they had initially estimated for 2010, as well, ING
Bank remains pessimistic and says the economy will go down again
next year.
"I see a 2% economic decline in 2011. We will most likely have new
tax adjustment steps taken in the first half of 2011. If there
won't be any tax adjustment steps, then we will at least see
redundancies in the public sector, progressing somewhat faster than
they have until now," said Nicolae Chideşciuc, chief economist of
ING Bank, who attended the ZF Expert debate on the chances of an
economic rebound in 2011.
On the other hand, Raiffeisen Bank's chief economist, Ionuţ
Dumitru, expects the economy to resume growth next year, going up
2%, but says that there is still the risk of that growth turning
into a decline if new tax raises are applied.
Florian Libocor, BRD-SocGen's chief economist, anticipates 0.5-1.5%
economic growth for next year.
More moderately optimistic was Radu Crăciun, Eureko Pensii's chief
investment officer, who sees the economy somewhere between minus
0.5% and plus 0.5%.
The economy will remain in recession this year, contracting by 2%.
It fell by 7.1% last year and some analysts are even expecting this
year's GDP to go down by as much as 3%.
The National Statistics Institute is due to announce the data on
the economic performance of the second quarter today.