March 8, 2019

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Newsroom, 08.03.2019, 14:48

POPULATION Romania’s population continues to diminish due to a decline in
the fertility rate and due to migration, data publish by the National Institute
for Statistics (INS) show. 200 people, mostly men with ages between 30 and 40,
are leaving the country on a daily basis. According to the aforementioned
institute on January 1st 2018 there were 120 thousand people less
than on January 1st 2017. According to the same data, more Romanians
died than were born and the number of those leaving the country was higher than
those who entered it. A 2017 INS survey shows that more children were born in
Romanian families living in Italy than in Romania and the number of children
born in Romanian families abroad is double than in Romania.

MANDATE Romania’s Prime Minister Viorica Dancila has
presented in Bucharest the results of the first two months of the Romanian EU
presidency. It is an efficient and high-quality mandate highly appreciated by
all our European partners, the Prime Minister has said underlining the completion
of 67 files during this period. Referring to major issues on the European agenda,
Dancila says that Romania managed to secure consensus on several pending files
like the post-2020 EU budget, the functioning of the European single market,
industry competitiveness, stimulating digitization, social rights protection,
internal security, fighting terrorism, handling migration challenges, the EU’s
future after Brexit through tight cooperation as well as open and constructive dialogue with
representatives of the European Commission, the European Parliament and the
General Secretariat of the Council. In the first two months of its mandate,
Romania has managed over 650 events and meetings, both in the country and in
Brussels, the Prime Minister has also said.

GROWTH With a 0.7% growth in the fourth quarter of 2018 as against the
previous three months of the year, Romania’s economic growth was three times
higher than the 0.2% reported in the eurozone and more than double of the 0.3%
in the EU, says the statistical office of the European Union, Eurostat. However,
the growth rate of the Romanian economy in the last three months of 2018 is below
the ones in Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Sweden, Cyprus, Hungary, the Czech
Republic, Bulgaria, Slovenia and Slovakia. Finland, Denmark and Spain have also
reported a growth rate of 0.7% whereas Germany, Europe’s biggest economy,
reported zero growth in the same period of last year. Greece and Italy experienced
a decline of 0.1%. In comparison with the same period of 2017, in the fourth
quarter of 2018, Romania’s economy registered a growth rate of 4%, nearly four
times higher than the 1.4% EU rate and 1.1% in the eurozone.

FORECASTS The macroeconomic forecasts the 2019 state
budget is based upon are unrealistically optimistic, Cosmin Marinescu, economic
councilor for the Romanian president, has today said in Bucharest. According to
Marinescu, incomes are over evaluated by 1% of the GDP and are based
exclusively on pledges. Investments from local authorities are at an all-time
low of 1.2% of the GDP and the budget adopted in February indicates a Romanian
contribution to the EU diminished by 105 million euros. Marinescu went on to
say that the big deficit shows that the adjustment to 2018 is practically
non-existent, which runs counter the European Commission’s recommendation of a
1% of the GDP. Romanian president Klaus Iohannis has sent back to Parliament the
law on the 2019 state budget. The president had previously notified the
Constitutional Court, which deemed the law as constitutional. The 2019 budget
is based on a 5.5% economic growth, a 2.5% deficit and a GDP of 200 billion
euros.

(translated by bill)