World Bank improves prospects for Romania's economic evolution for 2018 and 2019

Autor: Alexandra-Maria Cioroianu
Publicat: 10-01-2018 11:27

The Romanian economy will record an advance of 4.5% in 2018 and 4.1% in 2019, compared with an advance of 3.7% and 3.5% respectively estimated in June last year, shows the report "Global Economic Prospects" published on Tuesday by the World Bank. 

Moreover, the international financial institution expects Romania to report a GDP growth of 6.4% for 2017, compared to the 4.4% estimated in June. 

The growth will slow down in 2020, when the Romanian economy is expected to record an advance of 3.5%, shows the report of the World Bank. 

The international financial institution believes that the new privatisations facing Central Europe (including here Romania, Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria) represent an opportunity for increasing productivity, especially if they are coupled with an improved management and corporate governance, increased access to international markets and a good functioning of the legal and institutional framework. Besides privatisation, there are also other important opportunities for strengthening governance and, thus, productivity of the state companies, as shown by the efforts made by Romania and Macedonia, reads the report published by the World Bank. 

In Romania, several state companies were depoliticized and their Boards of Directors professionalized over 2013-2016. Moreover, Romania also adopted, in 2016, the Law on governance of state-owned companies, which improves the criteria for selection and assessment of managers of state companies and introduces performance monitoring for other managers. 

However, the implementation of this law has been delayed and resistance to change is still significant, warns the World Bank. 

The gradual slowing down of the expansion of the EU economy will also impact the advance of exports to the region, especially Central Europe, where the GDP is expected to slow down, from 4.7% as estimated for 2017 down to 3.2 per cent in 2020, on the background of growth pace slowing down in Hungary, Poland and Romania.

AGERPRES .