Foreign investments, down around 40% in June

The volume of foreign direct investment in Romania revolved around 341 million euros in June, down 40% compared to the level of June 2005 (of around 550m euros), according to National Bank of Romania (NBR) data. Foreign investment in the first six months of the year amounted to 3.2 billion euros, 52% higher compared with the first half of 2005. Lower investments registered in June slowed down the growth pace of foreign investment from 93% in the first five months to 52% by mid-year. With just 34 million euros, June has been the weakest month this year in terms of the volume of foreign investment. From this point of view, January and March were investment peaks this year, with 694 million euros each. For the whole of 2006, official estimates point to a volume of foreign investments worth over 7 billion euros.