Romania's economy advances 5.2 pct in Q1 2022

Romania's economy advanced 5.2 percent in Q1 2022 from the previous quarter and 6.5 percent from the year-ago period, the National Institute of Statistics (INS) announced on Tuesday.

As regards the evolution of GDP in Q4 2021, the INS explained that seasonally adjusted volume indices have been changed from the second provisional version as a result of the revision of the unadjusted series by including the GDP estimate for Q1 2022, as well as by the change of the model applied for the seasonal adjustment in the quarterly series.

Thus, whereas according to data released in April, the GDP was 0.1 percent down in the last quarter of 2021, the new data shows that the economy advanced 1 percent.

The aforementioned revision of the unadjusted series results in the following changes: the result for Q1 2021 compared to Q4 2020 was revised from 101.9% to 101.1%; the result for Q2 2021 compared to Q3 2020 was revised from 101.6% to 103.3%; the result for Q3 2021 compared to Q2 2021 was revised from 100.4% to 97.1%; the result for Q4 2021 compared to the Q3 2021 was revised from 99.9% to 101.0%, INS said in the release.

Early this May the National Strategy and Projection Commission (CNSP) revised downwards its estimate for the GDP by 1.4 percentage points to 2.9 percent from 4.3 percent in the previous forecast.

The CNSP estimates are in line with the forecasts of the international financial institutions, which have significantly downwardly revised the growth milestones for the Romanian economy this year. Thus, the IMF latest growth estimate for 2022 is 2.2% as to 4.8% in the autumn, while the World Bank's projection is even more modest - at just 1.9%.

On Monday, the European Commission released its spring economic forecast, showing that after a robust growth in 2021, Romania's economy is expected to slow to 2.6% in 2022, as inflation dents available revenues and the war in Ukraine affects confidence in the economy, supply chains and investments.

The draft budget for 2022 was designed for an economic growth of 4.6%. AGERPRES