Financiarul

Romania will have a 1.3-1.5 percent economic growth in 2010, an acceleration in 2011, while in 2012, it will register a 5-6 percent increase, Mihai Tanasescu, Romania’s representative in the International Monetary Fund (IMF), told a conference on economy development on Thursday.

‘In 2010 Romania will have a 1.3-1.5 percent economic growth, an acceleration in 2011, while in 2012, there will be a 5-6 percent growth. We will not see 8 percent increases, but these increases must be strengthened, must be sustainable, so that every step ahead should not be a weapon to take us down another time,’ added Tanasescu.

Also, he said he was optimistic about the Romanian economy recovery. ‘I am optimistic, but it is an optimism backed by an administrative, political determination. It is only up to us, up to the way in which we will recover whatever we lost in 2009 and how fast we will manage to witness the comeback of this 5-6 percent growth potential in the years ahead,’ he added.

‘In 2010, Romania is to shyly resume the economic growth process. The elements leading to this idea are connected to the exports, which started to be operational. We are witnessing a steel and aluminium production increase. These are encouraging signs. At the same time, risks do exist and they are related to the way in which the structural reforms are implemented at state level, because they are to go further in the private segment. We can see that a lot of foreign investments came to Romania in the past few months,’ said Tanasescu.

In his opinion, the year 2010 challenges are connected to keeping in balance the pressures’ risks on the inflation – the prices of raw materials, of oil – on the one hand, and the national currency, on the other hand. ‘It is a difficult equation, conjugated with the budgetary policies,’ mentioned Romania’s representative in IMF. The Romanian official also declared that the fiscal strengthening and structural reform implementation would be achieved, but at some costs.