A powerful middle class is tagged as the miracle cure for the Romanian economy and society. Hard to identify in the results of elections and politics and even harder to find in statistics, the middle class surfaces during holidays, though, when it raids the stores, leaving merchants feeling sorry they did not order more merchandise...
Was this Christmas a sign that the Romanian market is finally living up to the major retailers' expectations? Or was it just a spur of the moment?
A pessimistic answer is hard to give. All the players in the Romanian trade, either retailers, cash & carry networks or any other form of wholesale trade announced higher sales in 2002.
The total value of the consumer goods market is in its turn higher than in 2001, as statistics say, although lower if considering the last three or four years on the overall. The estimates of the companies dealing on the consumer goods market are even more optimistic for the year that has just begun, mainly based on the holiday sales trend. The reason behind this trend is yet unclear: is it the increase in the people's purchasing power or the change in the consumers' shopping habits, that is giving up neighbourhood shops and going to "-markets" instead?
The purchasing power increase is the answer generally provided either by producers of consumer goods or by merchants. The statistical data partially verify this trend: the small gain of the USD against the ROL last year (6% for the entire year) allowed the net average salary to increase by 7% between January - October (the latest available data) alone. The full-year increase in USD might reach 10%. Still, this great deal of money for shopping could have been found elsewhere, as the Romanians working abroad sent $1.3bn - $1.5bn back home last year, leaving the foreign direct investment behind.
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