Financiarul

The start was of minus 10 percent in the intra-community area – the reduction was of 40.8 percent compared to the same period, said secretary general of the National Association of Exporters and Importers of Romania (ANEIR) Mihai Ionescu.

‘In the first decade of November 2009, Romanian exports went down 20.1 percent compared to the same period of the previous year. In this first year of recession we reported a loss from exports worth some 7.5 billion euros, compared to the previous year. According to the figures provided buy the National Statistics Institute, we lost some 7,000 exporting companies.

Of 21,800 exporting countries, about a third of the companies were not active at mid-year,’ said ANEIR’s general secretary.
According to forecast of the ANEIR and of Romania’s Export Council, this year will end with a 20-percent diminution of exports and 35-percent for imports, which will lead to a commercial deficit worth some 8.5 billion euros.

Referring to the outlooks of the year to come, ANEIR secretary general and co-president of the Romanian Council for Export said that based on the information supplied by exporters, the first half of 2010 is not expected to report recovery or rise.
‘Our hope is that Western Europe, our main trade partner will fully recover, in the second half of 2010, when we are likely to report stability and slowly to resume the rise in exports,’ said Mihai Ionescu.

On Tuesday, ANEIR in partnership with other non-governmental structures and with EU’s co- financing organized the first seminar within the ‘Romanian entrepreneurs’ programme which is aimed at developing the sector of small and medium-sized enterprises and finding opportunities for the accession of structural funds for the recovery of SMEs.