Romania registers highest government deficit growth in EU in Q1

Romania registered the highest government deficit growth out of the European Union in Q1, of 1.3 percentage points, from a deficit of 1.8 percent of GDP in the last quarter of 2016 of up to 3.2 pecent of GDP in the first three months of this year, while in the EU and Euro zone, it dropped by 0.2 percentage points this year, according to the European Office of Statistics (Eurostat).

The government deficit of Romania in the first quarter of this year was three times higher than the one in the EU (1 percent of GDP) and only France had a higher government deficit than Romania (3.3 percent of GDP) among the EU member states.

However, between the last quarter of 2016 and the first quarter of this year, the government debt increased in EU by 0.5 percentage points in EU and in the Euro zone, by 0.3 percentage points, but dropped by 0.4 percentage points in Romania, from 37.6 percent of GDP up to 37.1 percent of GDP.

Romania is among the EU member states with the lowest government debt, outrun only by Estonia (9.2 percent of GDP), Luxembourg (23 percent of GDP), Bulgaria (28.6 percent of GDP) and Denmark (36.7 percent). According to Eurostat, the government debt of Romania is under the EU average of 84.1 percent of GDP and 89.5 percent of Euro zone.

The most recent estimations of International Monetary Fund (IMF) shows that the budget deficit of Romania will reach 3.7 percent of GDP in 2017 due to the new salary bill, the increase in pensions and the tax reductions.