Romania’s industrial output down 3.8% y/y in Q1

The industrial output contracted by 3.8% y/y in Q1 despite the notable performance of industries such as oil refining or automobile production, Romania’s statistics office INS announced.

It was the sixth quarter of negative growth, while in broader terms, Romania’s industry has been losing ground since 2018 with an annualised negative growth rate of over 1% p.a. for the whole industry and nearly 1% p.a. for the manufacturing sector over the past five-year period. Both the sectors of mining and utilities have lost ground at rates of over 3% p.a. during the five-year period.

In the first quarter of this year, the output in the manufacturing sector declined by 2.3% y/y while the sector of utilities plunged by 13.5% y/y, and the mining and quarrying posted a positive performance (+1.7% y/y).

Among manufacturing industries, refining boasted a 13.4% y/y advance and the automobile industry +10.6% y/y. Food manufacturing also posted a small but positive advance (+1.4% y/y).

But energy-intensive industries such as metallurgy (-34.3% y/y) or chemistry (-15.7% y/y) are still far from bottoming out.

For the whole year, the state forecasting body expects a slight (-4% y/y) decline in gross industrial output while it also expects the sector to post positive growth rates of some 4% y/y or over in 2024-2026.

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