The growth of exports, which have outpaced imports in six out of the last seven months, indicates that the results of investments of the last few years have started to show in an improved export structure, which is helping to stabilise the trade deficit.
Out of all the major categories worth of over 100 million euros, cars, equipment, technology and generally high-added value products are the ones that witnessed the fastest export growth in the first four months of this year.
"The car and transport equipment industry accounts for the largest share of Romania's foreign trade. The increase in production capacities as a result of investments in this segment makes a positive contribution towards the gradual reduction of the trade deficit," stated Rozalia Pal, chief economist of UniCredit Tiriac Bank.
Although imports are higher in absolute value, which led to a 10.8 billion-euro trade deficit in the first six months and an increase of 11%, the growth rate has been slowing down since December 2007.
"The trade deficit trend in the first half is, in my opinion, encouraging; we are seeing exports increase faster than imports and an annual growth rate of 11.3% much below the 67% growth rate registered during the same period of last year. The trend is also generated by the structural improvements of exports," stated Georgiana Constantinescu, an analyst at Credit Europe Bank.
Exports witnessed an over 21% annualised growth rate in June if calculated in euros, while imports are one step behind in terms of growth since the first half of the year.
The highest export growth in the first half of the year of all the high-value categories was registered by the "Office or automated data processing machines and devices" category, up 197% compared with the first four months of 2007.
"Boosting exports for certain product categories
