Economic expectations for Romania see highest improvement in CEE in August, shows survey

Newsroom 13/08/2015 | 16:14

Economic expectations for the Romanian economy posted the highest improvement in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) this August, according to a survey by the Mannheim Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) and Erste Group Bank.

Both Romania and Slovakia saw the indicator increase to 50 points in August, the highest value in the CEE region, Romania also reporting the most significant m-o-m improvement (an increase of 18 points in August compared to July).

Economic expectations for the entire region, including Turkey, posted a slight increase in August 2015. The ZEW-Erste Group Bank Economic Sentiment Indicator for the CEE region, which reflects the financial market experts’ expectations for the CEE region on a six-month time horizon, went up by 3.5 points in the August edition, now standing at 19.0 points.

However, the experts’ assessment of the current economic situation for the CEE region has worsened by 20.1 points in August 2015. The indicator entered negative territory by dropping to minus 4.7, but a large majority of the surveyed experts (85.7 percent), consider the current economic situation to be “normal”, according to the ZEW report.

Some 48 financial market experts participated in the survey which was carried out in late July and early August and were asked about their expectations for the following six months.