“We forecast ending this year with a deficit of 20 percent. Imports will be 35 percent lower than in 2008, and the trade deficit this year will be of €8.5 billion, down 65 percent year-on-year,” according to a statement yesterday by the Secretary General of the National Association of Exporters and Importers in Romania (ANEIR), Mihai Ionescu.
According to the official, some 7,000 exporting companies have exited the market since the beginning of this year, namely one third of the total. “No rebound is announced for the first half of next year. We will still have to face a decline in exports. If Europe bounces back, we will probably resume the increase in exports in the second half of 2010,” added Ionescu.
The main difficulties that Romanian companies are facing are, according to Ionescu, the delays in reimbursing the value-added tax, payments to companies by the state of arrears for public work, or the deadlock in lending.
The latest data provided by the statistical office of the European Communities, Eurostat, indicates that Romania ranked seventh in the EU in terms of trade deficit in the first eight months of this year. In the January-August 2009 period, Romania’s trade deficit narrowed 60.4 percent year-on-year, to €5.9 bln, considering that imports fell 35 percent and exports dropped by 19 percent.
