Lower output last year

The Romanian economy last year managed again to achieve a high growth pace without the support of the matching dynamic of the industrial production. The industrial output growth pace therefore slowed down in 2003 compared with the previous year, when this index was 6% and was one of the main economic growth drives. The National Statistics Institute data show the industrial output to have progressed by 3.2% in absolute volume and by 3.4% in comparable conditions in terms of number of working days. The processing industry was main factor contributing to the industrial output increase, though progress was slower in this case too, reaching 3.9% and 4.1% respectively. ZF