Cash, the best possible present

A car, a TV set or, perhaps, a diamond ring? Actually, the best Christmas present, for Romanians, is an envelope stuffed with cash. And their relatives who are working abroad are fully aware of this fact.

The British postal service has announced that Romania ranks fourth in the top of destination countries, considering the value of transactions using Great Britain’s MoneyGram.

“Money transfers through Money Gram climbed 30% this year. Increasingly more people from Great Britain have friends or family abroad and we have seen growing demand for sending money as a present,” says Hugh Stacey, head of the Travel Services division of the British postal service, which forecasts 30,000 transactions for this year’s winter holidays. Romanian workers are more generous than those originating from Turkey, Bulgaria or India, but are being outpaced by South Africans and Jamaicans.

Once in Romania, the money is generally put back into circulation.

Thus, although one of the poorest Romanian areas, the eastern zone (which sees most Romanians going off to work abroad) does count for the sales reported by the retailers of electronic products.

In fact, the stores located in this area see more acquisitions in cash than the average, especially during the holidays. According to officials of retailers, the best example is the month of August, when almost all Italians go on holiday and the Romanians working in this country return to Romania.

Under the circumstances, although August is generally a slow month for the sales of household devices, the stores located in Moldova are posting soaring sales and, very often, the buyers choose top-of-the-range products.

In the first nine months this year, the Romanians working abroad transferred 1.215bn euros in Romania, up 6% from the year-ago period.

In fact, the transfer of this money to Romania is one of the factors supporting the balance of payments, as the foreign currency demand triggered by the trade deficit is exceeded by the foreign currency supply, brought by foreign investments or banking loans.
ionut.bonoiu@zf.ro