The Romanian economy is starting to show slightly positive signs after well over two months of bad news: exports are recovering a bit of the lost ground, interests are going down, investments in mutual funds reached an all-time high in April, while Romania’s default risk traded abroad has now gone down to 30,000 euros to insure one million euros, from 73,000 euros at the beginning of the year.
Immediately after the emergence of these good signs of the economy, the ruling coalition (Democrat Liberal and Social Democrat Parties) rushed to announce that if things continued to go well, a series of the terms imposed by the IMF through the loan agreement could be dropped.
As for exports, they witnessed the slowest decline pace of the last four months in March, with the better performance coming as a result of the car fleet renewal scheme applied in Europe.
The value of exports therefore stood at 2.56 billion euros, almost 7% lower than in the same month of last year, but the decline pace was four times lower than in January (-24%) and February (-28%), according to the National Statistics Institute data.
Calculated in RON, exports posted the first increase this year, 8% in March, compared with the similar month of 2008, after declines of 13% and 16% in January and February.
"This was a positive signal in terms of industrial orders coming from abroad. Something is starting to move, especially in the car making industry. The main foreign partner is Germany and we hope this positive signal will maintain," said Valentin Brebenel, advisor with the Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Ministry.
The results of the main local carmaker, Automobile Dacia, confirm the increase in the number of orders local firms got from abroad. The company exported almost three times more vehicles in March than in the corresponding month of 2008.
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