P&G head expects economic recovery as of spring

Sotirios Marinidis, general manager of P&G Romania, the biggest local producer of non-food fast moving consumer goods, believes the local economy will return to growth next year, and says the company he helms will end this year, on the rise, too.
“For next year we expect the Romanian economic context will improve and that the Gross Domestic Product will rise starting in the spring-summer season. As for P&G, we think we will continue to grow at a faster pace than the economy,” said Marinidis, who has been running Romanian operations since July 1st 2009. The head of P&G did not provide details on this year’s sales dynamic until the official data are published, at the beginning of next year, but said the company had met the targets set out in the draft budget in 2010.
However, in the past two years the business of Procter & Gamble on the Romanian market started on a downward trend amid a consumption decline. The company posted 280 million euros in sales in Romania in 2009, down 11% against the preceding year, but the turnover reported by the Timișoara plant almost doubled during the interval after production of Fairy detergent kicked off.