Private demand pushes up Romania’s trade gap by 17% y/y to 10% of GDP in 12 months to November

Romania’s imports of goods advanced by 2.8% y/y to EUR 126 billion in 12 months to November, driven by robust domestic demand for consumption and investments, while the exports contracted by 1.5% y/y to EUR 92 billion in the same 12-month period, according to data published by the statistics office INS.

The trade deficit in the 12-month period surged by 17% y/y to EUR 33.5 billion or nearly 10% of GDP.

In November alone, exports advanced by 1.6% y/y to EUR 8.4 billion while the imports grew faster, by 6.2% y/y to EUR 11.2 billion.

For the first eleven months of the year, exports contracted by 1.0% y/y while imports rose by 3.3% y/y.

For this period, the deterioration in the country’s foreign trade was driven mainly by the food and mineral products (petroleum products), where the exports dropped because of the subdued crops in the previous year and outages in the oil refining industry.

The exports of food and petroleum products contracted by 15% y/y and 11% y/y, respectively. In contrast, the import of food goods increased by 5% y/y, and the import of oil, petroleum products, and natural gas contracted by only 1.5% y/y in the same period.

The automobile and chemical industries performed well in terms of foreign trade, with 4.1% y/y and 15.4% y/y annual advance for exports in the eleven months, compared to a slower advance of imports (+2.6% y/y and +7.2% y/y).

As regards the chemical industry, it still accounts for a very wide part of the overall trade gap as the imports exceeded exports by some EUR 11.8 billion – more than a third of the total trade gap for the period.

(Photo source: Andreykuzmin/Dreamstime.com)