Import bills soar: $9bn in five months

Romania’s imports in May verified the pessimistic expectations fuelled by their high-speed progress throughout January-April: they simply skyrocketed, reaching over $2bn, 47% higher than in the same time last year.

The cost of the goods bought from abroad is this way registering an all-time monthly high, dwarfing the similar statistical performance of exports, which reached the highest-level ever attained: $1.43bn.

The soaring imports showed in a monthly commercial deficit of $622 million, which makes the imbalance of the trade balance for the first five months even worse, pushing it to $2bn, a little more than half the total deficit in 2002. If calculated in euros, the export/import gap reached 1.82bn euros, compared with 1.61bn euros throughout January-May 2002.

What makes up the $8.7bn import bill for the first five months, anyway?

A good thing is that the largest share in the total (23.1%) is accounted for by plant and equipment, which shows a retooling process that creates premises for sustained economic growth. The expenses for this merchandise category totalled more than $2bn (1.85bn euros), up 45% (18% in euros respectively) compared with the same time last year.

An almost similar growth (43%) and also difficult to explain was registered by imports of mineral products (oil products, cement, salt), although Petrom halted imports and the cement market is covered by domestic sources. Imports of metallurgical products increased 37% in their turn, while the purchases of metallurgical products went up 31.5%.

The half-full glass of the five months of foreign trade shows the upward trend of the exports maintains, in spite of signs of fatigue in the previous months. The ROL’s serious depreciation against the euro – the main export currency, which reached a 9.2% high since the beginning of the year, has had a say in this.

Romania’s five-month exports rose to $6.76bn (6.22bn euros). If calculated in dollars, this value is 35.4% higher than that in the same time last year, but if calculated in euros, this growth is of only 10.2%. Romania in May exported merchandise worth $1.43bn (1.25bn euros), 36.5% and 9.1% respectively more than in May 2002. Compared with April, exports went up 11.3%. Exports in April had actually gone down if calculated in euros compared with April 2002.

It remains to be seen whether the exports manage to keep up with the pace set by imports, so that they would not seriously upset the balance of trade and make the need to finance the current account worse.