Holiday spending down 26%

This holiday season's spending has been lower than in the previous one, with NBR (National Bank of Romania) data revealing that payments in the economy declined by 26% around the yearend holidays, compared with winter of 2007-2008. In the period between the 20th of December and the 4th of January, the daily average of payments cleared through ReGis, a component of the Electronic System of Payments which processes high-value transfers, amounted to 15.7 billion RON, almost 26% less than in the 2007-2008 holiday season. Basically all payments made in the Romanian economy via banks are settled via the ReGis system. "Financial flows in the economy have been lower because economic activity as a whole slowed down," believes Ionut Dumitru, chief economist at Raiffeisen Bank. The decline in the value of payments reflects a diminution in the number of transactions conducted in the economy or a decline in their value. Even the peak day in terms of payments carried out in the holiday period - which was reached on the 23rd of December - was lower this year, 23.3 billion RON (around 5.8 billion euros), compared with the over 29 billion RON recorded on the 21st of December 2007.