Romanian economy set to grow slower this year, says business persons survey

Over a half of the business people from Romania estimate that the economy will continue to grow in 2017, but more slowly than in 2016, based on the moderate internal consumption and the increase of the external risks, according to a survey of KeysFin.

The survey regarding the economy expectations shows a moderate optimist for 2017, due to the fiscal-budgetary challenges and the global economic evolution.

After 2016, when the consumption was the main engine of the economic growth of over 4 percent, the economic evolution from 2017 is seen as positive, but the majority of the investors are prudent.

Even if the fiscal easing measures, from the VAT reduction from 19 percent of several taxes and income tax, together with the minimum wage increase by 16 percent from February should in theory stimulate the consumption, most of the business people have moderate expectations regarding the trend of economic growth.

Romanian economy to grow by 4.1 percent of GDP this year, says Nomura

Overall, 53 percent of the surveyed managers estimate a GDP growth between 4-4.1 percent, 28 percent forecast an evolution between 4.2 percent and 5 percent, while 13 percent believe the GDP will grow by less than 4 percent.

Six percent of the surveyed people avoided to answer, considering that there are still many unknown things to forecast the economic evolution from 2017.

The KeysFin barometer regarding the Romanian economic was carried out between December 1-30 2016 on a representative sample of 150 firms from several fields, including trade, financial services, agriculture, energy and IT.

The moderate economic growth was announced by the last data published by the National Institute of Statistics (INS). In the third quarter, the economic increase was steady at 4.4 percent compared with the same period of 2015, after an increase of six percent in the second quarter.

Georgiana Bendre