New Europe

Romania’s economy seems to be good shape at the moment. General business-activity is picking up and real-estate is coming back. In plus, public-sector wage hikes, several tax cuts, low interest rates and cheap fuel prices are currently boosting consume – whether it’s on new cars or at Carrefour. Sales of the French retailer in Romania rose by 13.6% in 2015. …

According to Oxford Economics, right now the main risk for the Romanian economy is a strong slowdown of China’s economy, which would delete 2% of the estimated growth of Romania’s GDP. But no worry. So far, Oxford Economics’ own forecast is for Chinese growth to ‘slow gradually’ over five years from the current 6.9% to as little as 2.9%. This …

Romanians allocate less than 1% of the household expenditures for investments, but spend 7% of their income on alcoholic drinks and cigarettes, said Adrian Vasilescu, advisor for strategy with the National Bank of Romania (BNR) this week at a conference in Bucharest. And even the expenditures for clothing and footwear (5%) were below the average amount spent for cigs and …

Romania´s economy grew strong from 2001 to 2008, with an average annual real GDP growth rate of 6.5%, according to the IMF. Thereby, property prices and demand rose in anticipation of EU accession, which took place in January 2007. But investors were disappointed by non-implementation of economic and political reforms which had been promised as part of EU accession conditions. …