Romania's Q1 2020 growth estimate officially kept at 0.3pct

Romania's real-term Gross Domestic Product in the first three months of 2020 was up 0.3% over Q4 2019, and 2.4% over Q1 2019 and even 2.7% when seasonally adjusted, according to provisional data released by the National Institute of Statistics (INS) on Tuesday.

According to INS, the seasonally adjusted Gross Domestic Product estimated for the first quarter of 2020 was 272.074 billion lei current prices, up in real terms 0.3% from Q4 2019 and by 2.7% from Q1 2019.

Unadjusted, the estimated Gross Domestic Product in the first quarter of 2020 was 215.965 billion lei current prices, up 2.4% in real prices over Q1 2019.

According to INS, compared with provisional version 1, the dynamics of GDP and gross value added remained unchanged, as did the volume and contribution of net taxes on product. The volume of gross value added by industry did not generally change significantly, with the exception of retail and wholesale trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles; transport and storage; hotels and restaurants, with a reduction in business volume by 0.5%, as well as entertainment, cultural and recreational activities; repairs of household products and other services, with an increase in the volume of activity of 0.9%.

In terms of the use of the GDP, significant changes in the contribution to the GDP growth between the two estimates were reported in individual and collective final consumption of the public administration expenditure, from + 0.2% to + 1.0%, as a result of an increase in their volume of activity from 100.9% to 105.0%; gross fixed capital formation, from + 0.9% to + 2.0%, as a result of a change in its volume of activity from 105.9% to 113.1%; net exports, from -3.2% to -2.2%.