The slower growth rate witnessed by euro zone states this year could have negative effects on Romania's economic growth.
In recent years, statistical data has revealed a significant connection between the economic growth rates registered in euro zone states and those in Romania. In 2006, when euro zone states (Europe's most economically developed) enjoyed the best growth period of the past 5 or 6 years, the effects were also felt in Romania, which had a year of economic growth way above expectations.
While the euro zone economy accelerated last year by 2.5%-3% and faster, Romania's economy registered a 7.7% growth rate, against official estimates at the start of the year that indicated a 6% rate.
"Euro zone growth is of great importance to Romania's economic evolution," says Dragos Cabat, vice-president with the Association of Financial Analysts. Romania exports approximately 70% of its commodities to euro zone states and imports 70% of commodities from the same area. A slower euro zone economy means less potential for the export of Romanian products and implicitly a slowdown in Romanian production, explain analysts.
A survey conducted by ZF among 15 specialists and officials indicates an average estimate of 6.05% for H1 economic growth in Romania.
In their findings, the 15 specialists estimate the economy advanced by around 6.1% in the second quarter, slightly above the 6% rate registered in the first quarter.
The estimates made by the survey's analysts in relation to first-half growth fluctuated between 5.5% (Florian Libocor, a financial analyst with BRD-SocGen) and 6.6% (Ciprian Dascalu, a senior economist with ING Bank Romania).
Analysts are therefore more pessimistic than in the previous survey conducted in the first quarter, when they indicated an average growth rate of 6.6%, followed by the National Statistics Institute (INS) communicating a GDP growth rate of only 6%.
"We expect data published by INS for Q2 to show smaller increases of added value in industry, services and agriculture against Q1. Both industrial output and turnover for market services provided to the population witnessed a slower growth in Q2 against Q1. Higher contributions in Q2 should come from the constructions industry and net product taxes," explains Ionut Dumitru, head of Raiffeisen Bank's Romanian research department.
The least optimistic analyst in the survey, Florian Libocor, estimates that despite the economic slowdown: "the main catalyst remains final consumption amid falling exports".
The biggest problem for the economy, believes Fabio Mucci, an economist with UniCredit Tiriac, is the widening gap between imports and exports.
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