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Cezar Mereuta: the main danger for the Romanian economy is Brexit, the second, a macroeconomic slippage in 2017
The main danger for the Romanian economy on short term is represented by the effects of a possible decisions of Great Britain to go out of the European Union and domestically there could be a slippage of the macroeconomic balance in 2017, stated, in an interview for Agerpres, Cezar Mereuta associated researcher of the Centre of Economic Macroshaping of the Romanian Academy.
The latter speaks in the interview about the strong and weak points of the Romanian economy as well as about the potential for development.
According to him, the first strong point is macroeconomic stability: ‘ the fact that Romania has a public debt of 40% of GDP against the average of the EU which is 90% of GDP represents a financial security. Secondly, the measures taken by the government to come back to the deficit of 3% after the big values recorded in 2008 and 2009. The third points is that we have a relatively good unemployment rate’.
As regards the domains where our country has development potential, the analyst appreciates that the total of agricultural resources and the food industry are on the first place. The gross added value of food industry out of the total of manufacturing industry is over a quarter, with the advantage that they are backed up by the raw material. The second potential is represented by the creative services. For creative services we include informatics services, information technology services, research and development. According to him, in three years from now on, Romania is on the European map as a centre of high technology as it will have the laser of the highest power in Magurele’. The third, according to his opinion, is the touristic potential, especially rural tourism, the Danube Delta and spa.
As regards the weak points of Romanian economy MrMereuta considers that they are education and policy regarding the SMEs. Another weak point is the situation of the land ownership by foreigners, as well as the infrastructure, corruption in administration, the degree of EU funds absorption. At the same time, an important issue is the growth of income inequality.According to the last release of Eurostat ( May 2016)Romania is the leader in the EU of income inequality: the report of the first 20% with the highest income and the last 20% with the lowest income is 7.2. The European average is 5.2.The inequality of income increased significantly after 2000. The new law of pay must be thought so that it lowers the inequality of incomes in Romania.
When referring to the possibility that the UK get out of the EU, Cezar Mereuta thinks that there could be problems with export, as well as the danger to get to the model of excessive growth on consumption, as it happened in 2008.