Current account deficit exceeds $1.3bn

The current account deficit exceeded 1.3 billion dollars over the first semester, as compared to 581 million dollars posted over the year-ago period. In June, the deficit increase was only 140 million dollars, against 406 million dollars in May.

The H1 situation of the current account was mainly triggered by the 97% increase in the deficit of the goods and services balance as compared to last year, up to 1.6 billion dollars.

The highest deficit was posted in the category of goods, with 1,452 million dollars, followed by tourism services (52 million dollars), transport (33 million dollars) and other services (62 million dollars).

The H1 current account deficit is still high, but the big difference between the trade balance deficit and the payment balance shows that Romania benefits from strong financing sources, Adrian Vasilescu, advisor to the Central Bank governor, told Mediafax.

For the first time since the beginning of the year, the current account logged a significant decrease of the positive balance of current transfers – the account’s main source of equilibrium, as compared to the year-ago period.

“There is a lot of autonomous financing outlined in the payment balance. We have an error and omission account, for the first semester of this year, which came close to one billion dollars. Romania has payment means,” says Vasilescu.

Mihai Ionescu, general secretary of the National Association of Romanian Exporters and Importers, believes that the entire foreign currency reserve of the National Bank will be used to cover the current account deficit at the end of the year, if the trade balance deficit keeps up the growth pace.

The medium- and long-term foreign debt went up 6.5% in the first semester, totaling 10.7 billion dollars.