The expected agricultural rebound and the reconstruction after the floods last year could take economic growth to an all time high. "Six-month economic growth stands at 7.4%, but if agriculture, and corn in particular helps us, we well reach an 8.5% growth this year," Adriean Videanu, executive chairman of the Democrat Party (PD) and one of the people who worked on the governing programme of the ruling Alliance, told ZIARUL FINANCIAR. "Flutur (Agriculture Minister i.e.), is reserved, but our simulations with the national accounts show that if agriculture does pretty well this year, we will have an 8.5% annual growth," says Videanu, who is also the mayor of Bucharest.
Analysts, as well as The National Forecasting Commission (CNP), the institution in charge of official economic estimates, lend support to Videanu's statements. CNP's chairman, Ion Ghizdeanu, says an 8.5% economic growth may happen this year, even though it is nothing more than an alternative scenario to the main forecast for the time being.
"If the economy maintains the same trend as it did in the first half of the year, and agriculture reverts to a 5 to 6% growth, we can have an 8-8.5% economic growth," Ion Ghizdeanu says. The preliminary forecast for this autumn, however, only includes a 6.7% GDP growth estimate at the moment, but it can be upped to more than 7% when the final forecast is made public, around October 20.
This year's GDP is put at 94.6 billion euros for now, if economic growth reaches 6.7%. Yet raising the growth forecast to 8.5% would take the economy close to 100 billion euros for the first time in history, compared with the 79.3 billion euros of 2005, when the GDP went up by only 4.1%.
The economy (the GDP) increased by 7.4% in the first half, and the figures of the CNP show that, without taking into account the fluctuations in the agriculture sector, GDP g
