Vlădescu telling foreigners Romania is already out of recession

Romania is already out of recession and on the right track, Finance Minister Sebastian Vlădescu told foreign investors during a live statement on international business TV channel Bloomberg yesterday morning.
Asked when he thought Romania would "comfortably exit the recession and start to grow", Vlădescu answered with a slight hesitation: "Well, we already did. We had very, very slight growth in the second quarter. For the first time after six quarters of decline we had 0.3% growth in the seventh, so that I am optimistic we are on the right track."
Still, compared with the second quarter of 2009, the economy went down 0.6% of GDP. A 0.1% quarter on quarter increase had been previously registered in the third quarter of last year. Vlădescu ignored the 1.9% GDP decline forecast for 2010 considered at the recent budgetary adjustment.
This the first time since the beginning of his current term in office that the Finance Minister has been so optimistic, after having constantly voiced his reservations about the chances of an economy recovery for this year and even for 2011 from this spring through mid summer.
With a smile on his face, he now says he is confident that the "difficult steps" taken by the Government - the 25% salary cut in the public sector for the last five months of the year and the VAT raise to 24% will balance the budget revenues and the deficit will stay under 7% of GDP this year.